Schooling for peace: creating a culture of care in an elementary school

Abstract

We live in a moment in time that is profoundly affected by the events at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999 and the tragic events of September 11, 2001. In reaction schools in this country have adopted a climate of retribution to deal with violence. The purpose of this research was to study the meaning of peace in the culture of Walden School. My hope in conducting this study was to begin to understand what a school that appears to have built an intentional community of peace looks like. As a constructivist ethnographer I collected data in the form of fieldnotes, interviews and documents. I analyzed those data using constructivist grounded theory and vignettes. That analysis revealed a theory of a culture of care, which contrasted with the dominant use of control of student behavior in schools.