Michalinos Zembylas, Professor at the Programme “Educational Studies” of the Open University of Cyprus, has been awarded a prestigious Commonwealth of Learning (COL) Chair. The COL Chair will focus on peace education and decolonization, and it aims a) to enhance the role of peace education as entangled with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) in building future sustainable peace by connecting and comparing findings from four case study countries (Cyprus, Israel/Palestine, N. Ireland, S. Africa) and b) to create Open Educational Resources (OER) that can be used in other Commonwealth countries to support and complement existing peace education curricula.
The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) Chairs Programme started in 2010, and Chairholders are honorary positions for professors of Universities within the Commonwealth who focus their teaching and research on topics relevant to the Commonwealth. During his three-year term, the COL Chairholder aspires to establish a network of peace education scholars and practitioners, set up an online platform as a portal for peace education researchers and practitioners, produce OER and position papers for a conceptual framework of peace education and decolonization in the participating countries and recommendations and strategies to Ministries of Education and policy makers on education for sustainable peace, as well as disseminate research results and COL Chair achievements on the topics under investigation.
The COL Programme appoints distinguished experts to help advance research, innovation and thought leadership, and it strengthens regional cooperation and provides visibility for the Commonwealth of Learning. COL has the following objectives: to promote and accelerate research, capacity building; to organise, facilitate and engage in research, innovation and thought leadership relative to the current and emerging trends in open and distance learning (ODL), open educational resources (OER), technology-enabled learning (TEL), and/or learning for sustainable development.
The holder of the COL Chair, Dr Michalinos Zembylas, is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus, Honorary Professor, Chair for Critical Studies in Higher Education Transformation at the Nelson Mandela University of South Africa, Research Fellow at the Unit for Institutional Change and Social Justice, University of the Free State, and Adjunct Professor, Centre for Research in Educational and Social Inclusion, University of South Australia. His main research interests focus on the role of emotion and affect in curriculum and pedagogy, as well as the development of programmes and teaching, especially related to issues of social justice pedagogies, intercultural and peace education, and human rights education. He has published many articles in international journals and is the author of several books.
