Three Roots of Transdisciplinary Analysis in Peace Education

How is mentality understood in relation to contextual conditions and what significance does mentality have for participation in transforming those conditions? Answers to this question are decisive for both the selection of content and how to communicate in peace education. The complexity of this question is evident if we accept that mentality is both a product of contextual conditions as well as a possible cause of their transformation. Human agency or participation in transformation is embedded in those conditions. As contextual conditions are not limited to the present and the past but also include predicted and potential future contextual conditions, mentality has to be understood also as a product of itself in that it can transcend status quo. Peace education can be of help as a tool for not only understanding past and present contextual conditions-but also for imagining potential realities of wanted and unwanted futures-.Participation in transformations from "is" to "ought"-including strategies for how to act in the present to avoid or achieve specific future contextual conditions-depends to some extent upon the educational support of such knowledge. Socialization into a family and a community (informal and non-formal education) is colored by those conditions while formal education reflects the educational preferences of the state. As it is not unusual that learnings in informal, non-formal and formal education are different and sometimes contradictory, the decision to focus peace education on one or two of these educations -or all three- would have to be taken on the background of understanding the relationship between mentality and contextual conditions. This task is an invitation to academic disciplines to assist in meeting the need for transdisciplinary cooperation in analyzing this complexity. The history of peace education has contributed to embryonic transdisciplinarity in analyzing this complexity evident in three contributions discussed and compared in this paper.