Journal for Peace and Justice Studies

This mixed-method design aimed to determine how practicing mindfulness in a high school classroom influences students’ academic focus and affective experience. Thirty-nine tenth-grade students participated in an eight-week intervention, in which they practiced mindfulness activities led by their certified English and yoga teacher once per week. Students completed a pre- and posttest Likert-scale survey to measure mindfulness using Greco, Baer, and Smith’s Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure (CAMM) as well as three, open-ended post-test reflection questions. The survey data were analyzed to assess change in mindfulness and change in focus, and the qualitative data were analyzed to understand students’ self-perceptions of their affective experience. Results show that students’ scores for both mindfulness and focus increased after the intervention and they also show that students made gains in self-knowledge. The findings provide implications for educators to improve their classroom environments and reduce their own stress.

Scholars of transitional societies argue that reconciling different narratives of the past is important to progressing toward reconciliation more generally. This article uses this argument as a starting point to explore the distinct narratives/memories of Monsignor Romero’s assassination that exist in the public sphere. The human rights community and left-leaning press’s memory of Romero is deep. This sector remembers the indisputable facts of the assassination—who, what, where, when—but also those things that the right disputes—by whom and why. The right’s memory, by contrast, acknowledges only the most basic facts of the assassination while avoiding questions of causality and blame. This points to a continued lack of reconciliation in El Salvador. Using Romero’s assassination to explore views on reconciliation, this article argues that it is clear that the reconciled version of the violent past exists in a country transitioning away from conflict must be detailed and deep.

Power-sharing agreements, despite their disappointing history, are still the prevailing tool used for diffusing intrastate conflicts in Africa. One element that requires additional analysis is the role of third-parties in power-sharing negotiations. An analysis of the role of France in power-sharing negotiations in Chad, Mali, Central African Republic, Rwanda, and the Ivory Coast, suggests a biased approach that harmed the outcomes and sustainability of those negotiations. A better approach is to increase the power of third-parties like the African Union (AU). Currently, this organization lacks the executive capacity to guarantee the implementation of power-sharing negotiations. Empowering the AU’s executive arm through the formation of a military force, should allow for enhanced capacity in power-sharing negotiations.