title: Great expectations: a study of technology, peace, and education in Sri Lanka
Creators: name: Spring, Alli
Publisher: name: The University of Edinburgh
Year: 2025
Subjects: subject: Sri Lanka
subject: technology
subject: learning
subject: Batticaloa, Sri Lanka
subject: Sociology of Expectations
subject: Everyday Peace Indicators (EPI)
subject: civil society organization (CSO)
subject: Eastern Province

description: The ubiquity of technology, a global decline in peacefulness over the last year (Global Peace Index, 2024, p.14), and the unique place educational spaces occupy in learning – if not unlearning – what we think we know about technology and peace all underscore the importance of pursuing research that crosses disciplines, seeks new intersections to examine, and reconsiders where and how certain research methods can be used. Rooted in the perceptions of war-affected educators and learners, this transdisciplinary thesis examines the intersection of technology and peace in educational institutions in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. Framed theoretically by the Sociology of Expectations and the everyday peace paradigm, this study leverages the Everyday Peace Indicators (EPI) approach, semi-structured interviews, and ethnographic observations as complementary research methods. Data for this study on technology for peace in education, or PeaceTech, was collected in two public schools and one civil society organization (CSO) between 2022 and 2024 during Sri Lanka’s concurrent political and economic crises. The scope of the study includes between 30 to 50 participants for the EPI portion of data collection (dependent on research site), over 75 interview participants – some of whom sat for more than one interview, as well as others who are not formally counted that shared informational conversations, and over 450 survey respondents – dozens of whom are double counted in that number as they completed both the Baseline and Final surveys. Batticaloa, a coastal city (and district) in Eastern Province is a highly diverse area populated by Hindu Tamizhs, Muslims, and small Sinhalese Buddhists and Christian populations. Serving as a primary security hub for the Sri Lankan military, Batticaloa and the surrounding area endured significant violence throughout the country’s civil war. Eastern Province was determined to be liberated in 2007, two years before the formal end to the wider civil war in 2009. More recently, Batticaloa was impacted by interethnic violence in 2019 when the Christian congregation at the Zion Church was attacked by suicide bombers from a neighboring Muslim community on Easter Sunday. Amongst the plural contexts of civil war and regional, interethnic conflict, Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Education and associated offices have designed, delivered, and iterated a range of peace education programs in the nation’s public schools. The digitalization of Sri Lanka has also been a key priority of recent administrations. As such, within this national context of prioritizing peace, education, and digitalization following the civil war, Sri Lanka is arguably becoming a legitimate PeaceTech hub. This endeavor has also been supported rhetorically and financially by international development agencies and domestic civil society organizations alike. Three key findings in this thesis contribute to the existing scholarship in Science and Technology Studies (STS), Peace Studies, and Education. First is a participatory conceptualization of Technology for Peace developed by operationalizing the Everyday Peace Indicators method. This distinct approach to defining ‘PeaceTech’ proves equally feasible and accommodating of a broader perspective of what constitutes a technology that works for peace to include digital, analogue, and natural technologies. Survey data yielding participatory statistics based on EPI Technology for Peace indicators also shows that perceptions of PeaceTech in the three educational institutions largely did not change over time. Second, data from semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations reveal the extent to which technology is integrated in the delivery of peace and peacebuilding education in the three host institutions. Though educators in all research sites hold high expectations of technology integration for delivering peace-related content to their learners, there is a discernible difference between the access to technology, the quality of instruction, and the demonstrable learning outcomes between the public schools and the CSO. That peace itself is understood as political, however, is evident across all locations. Third, by framing Technology for Peace indicators as expectations, this study expands the Sociology of Expectations theory into the everyday space and encourages STS, a traditionally interpretivist field, to consider a better, more responsible form of applied positivism as relevant to our work.