Rhetoric, rationalities and realities in a Norwegian peace studies programme : knowledge and competences : a discourse analytical approach

Abstract

This thesis presents an account of an empirical study of discourse of knowledge underlying a Master Programme of Peace and Conflict Transformation (MPCT programme) at the Centre for Peace Studies (CPS) the University of Tromsø. The study applies a multidisciplinary framework for discourse analysis which draws on the fields of pedagogy, peace studies, phronetic social science, and epistemology connected to international policy programmes. The thesis analyses how the claims on valid relevant knowledge in the MPCT programme are constructed and contested, and what effects the views on knowledge have on the competence aims and methods of learning in the programme. In doing this, the thesis also explores to what extent the espoused values and pedagogical principles in the programme description are alive as a basis and carried out in the MPCT as presented. It analyses the discourse of six staff respondents and ten student respondents at CPS in light of a conflict transformation framework, and phronetic social science understood as value-rational deliberation and action. In order to create a distance to the MPCT programme of which the researcher is a part, interviews with three staff respondents and three student respondents were also performed at Department of Peace Studies (DPS), University of Bradford, UK, to supply a comparative context to the MPCT programme. Discourse analysis shows that there is a considerable lack of coherence between the rhetoric and the realities of the MPCT programme at CPS. Staff respondents’ sense of agency is limited in its strength by being constituted within a discourse of organisational constraints. Power lies in what some respondents refer to as the old-fashioned organisational model, reflecting sedimented Enlightenment views of knowledge and the New Public Management (NPM) market philosophy in the university organisation. Student respondents, and also some of the staff respondents, call out for a broader view of knowledge in MPCT programmes, to also involve intrapersonal and critical knowledge, practical embodied knowledge, and team work.

Key words academic knowledge, conflict transformation, discourse analysis, epistemology, knowledge construction, knowledge view, multiple frames education, peace education, phronetic social science, praxis, transformative learning theory,