Garden City, NY - June 5, 2017 - Adelphi University’s Rita Verma, Ph.D., associate professor in the Ruth S. Ammon School of Education, has been awarded a top prize—the ANAHEI Research Leadership Award: Global Issues, from the 2017 Global Conference on Education and Research (GLOCER) for her book Critical Peace Education and Global Citizenship: Narratives From the Unofficial Curriculum (Routledge, 2017).
The book was inspired by Dr. Verma’s work in the community and in the classroom and her passion for teaching social studies education and peace studies at Adelphi.
“It is in the class when we get angry—upset and disillusioned—yet find a sliver of possibility or imagination and find solutions.” Dr. Verma said about teaching at Adelphi. “These moments give me hope that young people in society care and will want to make a difference— whether that be a small act in their own life or a grand movement to resist violations of human rights- it makes me believe that humanity will move forward when it feels that the world is moving backward."
The book’s focus is on how to teach for global change, imagining possibilities for peace and human rights which, according to Dr. Verma, requires a certain level of courage and determination.
“I hoped to share through my own examples and the work of countless allies that the “in between moment” of silence and rupture- might be the point of departure to imagine and develop strategies to realize peace and global citizenship.” explained Dr. Verma. “As students become the learner activists – they begin to give meaning and a sense of ownership of their vision and interpretation of what it means to be critical and responsible for their own actions and for the fate of others.”
Dr. Verma, whose focus in Social Studies Education and Peace Studies at Adelphi, offers narrative accounts representing the multiple ways teachers and learner activists have come to realize the possibilities of peace through “unofficial curricula” and included many rich examples from her own classroom where she approaches teaching at Adelphi with the same ideology.
“My students need to take ownership of their lens and voice and further through their own agency- realize a pathway towards a vision of a better community and world.” said Dr. Verma. “The knowledge factory has become a race to accumulate facts as a means to an end—whereas understandings of peace and human rights essentially become a means to a beginning… and is oftentimes a journey with no defined outcome.”
The book has also been nominated for the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Exemplary Research Award and will be submitted for CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title award consideration.
Dr. Verma is far from finished with her work. She hopes to write another book in the future and is currently working with the United Nations and other national organizations on multiple projects as an advocate for human dignity and rights.
The Adelphi University School of Social Work: http://socialwork.adelphi.edu/
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