Navigating Discomfort and Reluctance: Enhancing Future Teachers' Readiness and Competences to Teach About Conflict in Kenya and the Netherlands

To support peacebuilding through education, teachers must confidently engage with diverse conflict perspectives and manage sensitive discussions. This presentation explores the use in teacher professional development of the ‘conflict history education framework’ in Kenya—where conflict is recent—and the Netherlands—where the war on Gaza fuels polarization. Developed through fieldwork in Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the framework addresses teachers’ beliefs about the social utility of conflict education, their pedagogical skills, historical knowledge, and emotional readiness. It considers trauma, fears of backlash, and aims to equip educators for constructive, critical engagement with complex historical narratives.