| This study examines teacher autobiographies, and classroom pedagogical practices, of twenty-one Malawian teachers from seven Malawian primary schools. The aim of the study was to investigate how these teachers defined and enacted peace and social justice education. The study examines how the teachers used autobiography to define and construct a peace and social justice curriculum and pedagogy, informed by an endogenous African peace epistemology of humanness, uMunthu (Musopole, 1994; Sindima, 1995; Kaphagawani, 2000; Chigona, 2003; Tambulasi and Kayuni, 2005).;The methodology involved a writing institute, classroom observations, post-observation interviews, in-depth life history interviews, and textual analysis of the teachers' autobiographies. In finding out what genres of writing were best suited to teaching for peace and social justice, teachers told stories about their lives growing up and going to school in the 1970s and 80s under a dictatorship, and about their lives now as teachers. Autobiography therefore turned out to be an important genre for these teachers, in developing a peace and social justice framework, and in defining uMunthu as a peace epistemology. I worked with the teachers to plan lessons that sought to study Malawi's problems from a peace and social justice perspective. Part of this process entailed a discussion of Malawi's colonial and post-colonial periods.;The data from the study comprises teachers' autobiographies, interview transcripts, notes from classroom observations, and a field journal. A four-part thematic framework---uMunthu, curriculum, pedagogy, and praxis---emerges from the data. In the framework, peace, social justice and human security are defined as the humanness that constitutes human identity. African epistemologies define this as uMunthu, (Chichewa), or uBuntu, in other southern African languages. According to Musopole (1994), uMunthu sees a human being as not only "belong[ing] to a community as a responsible member" but also as having "communion, which is the mark of a reconciled community" (p. 180). In the words of Desmond Tutu (1999), "We are bound up in a delicate network of interdependence because, as we say in our African idiom, a person is a person through other persons" (p. 35).;The autobiographies highlight topical issues that when addressed in the classroom and in the school, constitute the peace curriculum. The peace curriculum enables a peace pedagogy, aimed at social transformation through on-going action-in-reflection, referred to as Praxis (Freire, 1970; Bell et al., 1997; Glass, 2001; Spence and Makuwira, 2005).;The research offers new perspectives on uMunthu, peace and social justice, for teacher education, teacher professional development, curriculum development and classroom teaching. As a peace building effort for Malawi, the study brings teachers' lives to the fore and demonstrates the importance of endogenous African epistemologies, especially as more and more Africans explore the ideals of an African Renaissance. |
