Nearly a decade after a national peace education policy and negotiations to end Colombia’s armed conflict, this study uses multilevel, mixed-effects logistic regression to examine the ways in which students’ proximity to the conflict, perceptions of curriculum, and classroom context predict young people’s attitudes toward learning about conflict, peace, and justice in Colombia. We find that students who self-identify as victims or relatives of victims of the conflict are more likely than their peers who do not identify as directly affected to desire coverage of these sensitive topics in schools. Classroom conditions emerged as a predictor of students’ interest and were especially strong among those who did not self-identify as directly affected by the conflict’s history of violence and displacement. These findings are complemented by qualitative data on student and teacher perspectives on upholding the right to truth and navigating risks of retraumatization in the classroom.
Bellino et al. (Thu,) studied this question.