Art-Based Multi-Gogy for peace education in education 6.0: a framework for creative, collaborative, and ethical digital

1 Introduction

Peace education has become increasingly important as learners grow within a world shaped by geopolitical conflict, cultural polarization, social inequality, forced migration, digital misinformation, and rapid technological change. In such conditions, education cannot limit peace to moral slogans, civic obedience, or abstract ideals of harmony. Peace education must be understood as a complex educational process through which learners develop knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills related to nonviolence, justice, empathy, intercultural understanding, dialogue, cooperation, and responsible global citizenship (Galtung, 1969; Harris and Morrison, 2013; Reardon, 1988; UNESCO, 2023b). This requires learning environments that enable students not only to know about peace, but also to interpret, imagine, negotiate, and express peace in relation to lived experience and social realities.

Art-based education offers a meaningful pedagogical pathway for such learning. Through visual art, music, drama, movement, storytelling, poetry, performance, and digital media, students can explore ideas that may be emotionally complex, culturally sensitive, or difficult to communicate through conventional academic language. Art provides symbolic, affective, and dialogic spaces where learners represent conflict, express hope, encounter difference, and imagine alternative social possibilities. Dewey (1934) argues that art is deeply connected to experience, Eisner (2002) emphasizes the role of the arts in developing distinctive forms of thinking, and Greene (1995) highlights imagination as a way of seeing the world otherwise. These perspectives suggest that artistic practice can support emotional engagement, perspective-taking, critical reflection, and intercultural dialogue.

However, the relationship between art education and peace education remains insufficiently theorized. Existing scholarship recognizes the value of art in promoting empathy, creativity, and cultural awareness. Empirical and art-education research has further shown that artistic practice can support empathy development, including acting-based training that enhances empathy and theory of mind and design-thinking approaches in elementary art education that explicitly foreground empathy as a creative and social capacity (Goldstein and Winner, 2012; Montero, 2023). Yet art-based peace education is often presented as a set of classroom activities rather than as a coherent pedagogical framework. Similarly, peace education is frequently discussed through moral, civic, or policy-oriented perspectives, with less attention to how students creatively construct meanings of peace through artistic inquiry, peer collaboration, and digital participation. This creates a conceptual gap: art-based learning, peace education, learner agency, collaborative learning, and digital citizenship are individually important, but they are rarely integrated into a single future-oriented framework for peace learning.

This gap is particularly significant in the era of Education 6.0. In this article, Education 6.0 is used as a conceptual orientation rather than as a fully established policy category. It refers to a future-oriented educational direction that emphasizes human creativity, ethical responsibility, learner agency, digital participation, intercultural intelligence, and responsible engagement with intelligent technologies. It extends debates on Education 4.0, Society 5.0, postdigital education, artificial intelligence ethics, and futures of education (Aoun, 2017; Deguchi et al., 2020; Jandric et al., 2018; Moleka, 2023; UNESCO, 2021, 2023a). The Education 6.0 discourse is particularly useful here because it foregrounds the need to move beyond technologically driven models toward learner autonomy, human-centered innovation, ethical intelligence, and holistic educational development (Moleka, 2023). In this context, peace education must prepare learners not only to participate in society, but also to communicate responsibly, collaborate across differences, and use digital tools ethically.

To address this concern, this article proposes the Art-Based Multi-Gogy Peace Education Framework. The term multi-gogy describes the purposeful integration of four learning orientations: pedagogy, heutagogy, peeragogy, and cybergogy. Pedagogy provides structured teacher guidance in introducing peace concepts, artistic foundations, and ethical discussion. Heutagogy supports learner agency by allowing students to select peace-related themes, artistic media, and inquiry directions (Blaschke, 2012; Hase and Kenyon, 2000). Peeragogy positions students as co-learners and co-creators through collaborative artmaking, peer dialogue, and shared reflection (Corneli et al., 2015). Cybergogy extends art-based peace education into digital environments through multimedia storytelling, virtual exhibitions, digital portfolios, online dialogue, and ethically guided technology use (Wang and Kang, 2006).

The originality of this article lies in repositioning art-based peace education from an activity-based practice into a multidimensional framework for peace meaning-making. Peace meaning-making refers to the process through which students explore, interpret, negotiate, represent, and communicate meanings of peace through artistic, dialogic, and digital practice. The framework does not assume that art automatically produces peace. Rather, it argues that carefully designed art-based learning can create reflective, collaborative, and ethically guided conditions through which students develop peace literacy, empathy, intercultural awareness, creative agency, collaborative dialogue, and digital citizenship.

This article is guided by four conceptual questions: How can Art-Based Multi-Gogy reframe peace education in the era of Education 6.0? How do pedagogy, heutagogy, peeragogy, and cybergogy function in art-based peace learning? How can artistic practice support peace literacy, empathy, intercultural dialogue, and creative agency? How can digital and AI-supported tools be ethically integrated into art-based peace education without replacing human judgment, student voice, and cultural sensitivity?

2 Literature review and research gap

2.1 Peace education, global citizenship, and the need for creative pedagogy

Peace education is concerned with developing knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills that enable individuals and communities to prevent violence, resolve conflict, promote justice, and participate responsibly in society. It involves the cultivation of nonviolence, empathy, human dignity, intercultural understanding, democratic participation, social responsibility, and ethical global citizenship (Bajaj and Hantzopoulos, 2016; Galtung, 1969; Harris and Morrison, 2013; UNESCO, 2015, 2023b). Galtung's distinction between negative peace and positive peace remains important because education can promote order and tolerance without necessarily addressing exclusion, prejudice, inequality, and structural violence (Galtung, 1969).

Peace education is closely connected to global citizenship education because students need to understand how local actions, cultural identities, digital communication, and global challenges are interrelated (Banks, 2008; UNESCO, 2015, 2021). However, global citizenship can become abstract if students are not given meaningful opportunities to interpret and practice these values. Traditional peace education often relies on discussion, moral instruction, civic content, or policy-based curriculum. While necessary, such approaches may not sufficiently engage the affective, symbolic, and imaginative dimensions of learning. Students may learn the vocabulary of peace without developing the emotional, interpretive, and relational capacities needed to practice peace in diverse communities.

2.2 Art-based learning as transformative peace pedagogy

Art-based learning offers a pathway for strengthening peace education because it allows students to explore peace through experience, imagination, symbol, emotion, and dialogue. Through visual art, music, drama, poetry, movement, storytelling, performance, and digital media, students can represent issues such as conflict, reconciliation, displacement, cultural difference, environmental justice, and social exclusion. These forms provide alternative ways of knowing and communicating, and they can reveal emotional and cultural meanings that may remain hidden in conventional teaching methods (Barone and Eisner, 2012; Cahnmann-Taylor and Siegesmund, 2008; Leavy, 2020).

Art-based learning also supports transformative learning because it can challenge assumptions and open new perspectives. Transformative learning involves shifts in how individuals understand themselves, others, and the world (Mezirow, 1991). Arts-based approaches have been discussed as useful for peacebuilding, intercultural understanding, and cultures of peace (Cabedo-Mas et al., 2017; Lederach, 2005; Lehner, 2021). However, the transformative potential of art should not be assumed automatically. Without critical facilitation, art-based activities may become decorative, sentimental, or superficial. They may reproduce cultural stereotypes or avoid difficult questions about injustice, power, and conflict. Therefore, art-based peace education requires a pedagogical structure that connects artistic practice with critical reflection, dialogue, ethical sensitivity, and social understanding.

2.3 Social and emotional learning, empathy, and intercultural dialogue

Peace education is strongly connected to social and emotional learning because peaceful relationships require self-awareness, emotional regulation, empathy, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills. Research on social and emotional learning has shown that well-designed programs can support social behavior, emotional competence, and academic development (Durlak et al., 2011; Zins et al., 2004). In peace education, emotional development is not separate from intellectual learning; it is central to how students understand conflict, cooperation, and human dignity.

Empathy is especially important, but it must be understood critically. It involves the capacity to recognize the dignity, experiences, and perspectives of people whose cultural, social, or historical backgrounds may differ from one's own. Intercultural dialogue is equally central because peace cannot be built by ignoring difference or reducing it to simple messages of tolerance. Art-based learning can create shared spaces where students explore cultural meanings, compare perspectives, and co-create symbolic representations of coexistence. However, culturally responsive and culturally sustaining approaches are needed so that cultures are not treated as fixed, exotic, or decorative (Gay, 2018; Paris, 2012).

2.4 From pedagogy to Multi-Gogy in art-based peace learning

A central argument of this article is that art-based peace education requires more than a single pedagogical orientation. Pedagogy remains necessary because teachers provide structure, conceptual clarity, ethical guidance, and safe learning conditions. Students need to be introduced to key concepts such as peace, conflict, justice, empathy, cooperation, human rights, intercultural understanding, and global citizenship. However, teacher-guided pedagogy alone is insufficient if students remain passive recipients of peace values.

Heutagogy becomes relevant because peace education becomes more meaningful when students exercise agency by choosing themes, media, inquiry questions, and modes of representation (Bandura, 2001; Blaschke, 2012; Hase and Kenyon, 2000). Peeragogy adds a relational dimension by positioning students as co-learners and co-creators through collaborative artmaking, peer critique, shared exhibitions, and dialogic reflection (Corneli et al., 2015). Cybergogy extends art-based peace education into digital environments where students may create digital stories, virtual exhibitions, multimedia peace campaigns, online portfolios, or cross-cultural exchanges (Wang and Kang, 2006). Together, these orientations reposition students as guided learners, self-determined inquirers, peer collaborators, and digital communicators of peace.

2.5 Ethical digital learning and AI-supported creativity

Artificial intelligence introduces new possibilities and challenges for art-based peace education. AI-supported tools can assist students in generating ideas, visual references, story prompts, translations, and multimodal compositions. However, AI also raises ethical concerns related to authorship, originality, bias, cultural stereotyping, misinformation, privacy, and the weakening of human judgment (Holmes et al., 2019; Kasneci et al., 2023; Miao and Holmes, 2023; Williamson and Eynon, 2020; Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019).

For this reason, AI should not be treated as a separate pedagogical philosophy in this article, but as part of ethically guided digital learning within cybergogy and Education 6.0. AI-generated material should function as provisional material for human critique, ethical reflection, and creative transformation. Students must learn to ask whether generated content misrepresents a group, simplifies a complex conflict, erases human dignity, or reflects their own thinking and ethical responsibility. Such questions help ensure that digital and AI-supported artmaking remains human-centered, culturally sensitive, and educationally meaningful.

2.6 Research gap

The literature suggests that peace education, art-based learning, social and emotional learning, global citizenship education, and digital learning each offer important contributions. However, these areas are often discussed separately. Peace education literature frequently emphasizes values, conflict resolution, and citizenship, but gives less attention to artistic imagination and creative meaning-making. Art education literature highlights expression, creativity, and interpretation, but does not always connect these processes systematically to peace literacy, intercultural dialogue, and global responsibility. Digital learning literature addresses technological engagement, but often lacks deeper integration with ethical peacebuilding and artistic inquiry.

This fragmentation creates a conceptual gap. There is limited theoretical clarity on how teacher guidance, learner agency, peer collaboration, and digital participation can be integrated into a coherent framework for art-based peace education. This article addresses the gap by proposing the Art-Based Multi-Gogy Peace Education Framework, which integrates pedagogy, heutagogy, peeragogy, and cybergogy around the central construct of peace meaning-making.

3 Conceptual method and framework development

This article adopts a conceptual framework development approach. It does not report newly collected empirical data, nor does it claim to measure the effects of art-based peace education on students. Instead, it develops a theoretical model by synthesizing selected bodies of literature related to peace education, art-based learning, global citizenship education, social and emotional learning, learner agency, collaborative learning, digital learning, and ethical technology use. Conceptual articles are important because they allow scholars to reorganize existing knowledge, identify theoretical gaps, build relationships between concepts, and propose models that can guide future empirical inquiry (Gilson and Goldberg, 2015; Jaakkola, 2020; MacInnis, 2011).

The framework was developed through four stages. The first stage identified limitations in conventional peace education, particularly teacher-centered, text-based, and moral-instructional approaches that may insufficiently engage imagination, emotional understanding, artistic expression, peer collaboration, and digital participation. The second stage examined the pedagogical potential of art-based learning as a mode of inquiry, expression, reflection, and meaning-making. The third stage synthesized four learning orientations: pedagogy, heutagogy, peeragogy, and cybergogy. The fourth stage constructed the framework around peace meaning-making as the central construct. The four-stage conceptual development process is summarised in Table 1.

Table 1. Conceptual development of the Art-based multi-gogy peace education framework.

The stages move from identifying limitations in conventional peace education to constructing a model centered on peace meaning-making.

The conceptual development process of the Art-Based Multi-Gogy Peace Education Framework is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1 shows how the framework was developed through an integrative conceptual process. It begins with the identification of limitations in conventional peace education, followed by the recognition of art-based learning as a creative and dialogic pedagogical pathway. The model then integrates four learning orientations before positioning peace meaning-making as the central construct of the framework.

The framework is conceptual rather than prescriptive. It does not suggest that all classrooms must follow a fixed sequence or that all art-based peace education activities must include every dimension equally. Instead, it offers a flexible model that can be adapted according to educational level, cultural context, available resources, artistic discipline, teacher expertise, and learners’ needs.

The framework is also normative and ethical. It assumes that peace education should not be reduced to neutral skills training or superficial messages of harmony. Teacher guidance, learner agency, peer collaboration, and digital participation must be shaped by respect for cultural sensitivity, student voice, authorship, inclusion, and responsible use of technology.

4 Theoretical foundations

The Art-Based Multi-Gogy Peace Education Framework is grounded in interrelated theoretical perspectives: peace education theory, aesthetic and arts-based learning, constructivist learning, transformative learning, social and emotional learning, critical pedagogy, and cybergogy. These foundations are not treated as separate theoretical blocks, but as complementary explanations of why art-based learning can support peace meaning-making. The theoretical foundations underpinning the framework are presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Theoretical foundations of the Art-based multi-gogy peace education framework.

Peace education provides the normative foundation because it defines the educational purpose of the model. Peace is not understood merely as the absence of violence. Following Galtung (1969), it includes justice, equity, dignity, cooperation, and the transformation of relationships. Reardon (1988), Harris and Morrison (2013), and Bajaj (2015) argue that peace education involves knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills related to nonviolence, human rights, conflict transformation, global responsibility, and democratic participation.

Art-based learning provides the expressive and imaginative foundation. Dewey (1934), Eisner (2002), Greene (1995), and Leavy (2020) help explain how art organizes perception, emotion, and meaning into expressive form. Constructivism provides the epistemological foundation because learners actively construct meaning through experience, interaction, and reflection (Vygotsky, 1978). Transformative learning explains how artistic and dialogic encounters may shift assumptions and perspectives (Mezirow, 1991).

Social and emotional learning provides the affective and relational foundation because peace requires emotional awareness, empathy, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (Durlak et al., 2011; Zins et al., 2004). Critical pedagogy provides the ethical and political foundation because peace education should not become a superficial celebration of harmony that avoids power, exclusion, or structural violence (Bajaj and Brantmeier, 2011; Freire, 1970). Cybergogy provides the digital foundation because contemporary learners increasingly encounter peace, conflict, identity, and difference through mediated environments (Wang and Kang, 2006).

5 Art-Based Multi-Gogy peace education framework

5.1 Framework architecture

The Art-Based Multi-Gogy Peace Education Framework conceptualizes peace education as a multidimensional process of creative, collaborative, and ethical meaning-making. Its central construct is peace meaning-making, which refers to the process through which students explore, interpret, negotiate, represent, and communicate meanings of peace through artistic, dialogic, and digital practices.

Peace meaning-making involves four interconnected dimensions: pedagogy, heutagogy, peeragogy, and cybergogy. These dimensions are not hierarchical. Rather, they function as complementary orientations that can be combined flexibly according to educational level, cultural context, artistic discipline, technological resources, and learners’ needs. The pedagogical functions, examples of practice, and intended outcomes of the four core dimensions are summarised in Table 3.

Table 3. Core dimensions of the Art-based multi-gogy peace education framework.

The four dimensions are complementary rather than hierarchical and may be combined flexibly according to context.

5.2 Core concepts

The framework is organized around five core concepts: peace meaning-making, peace literacy, creative agency, intercultural dialogue, and digital citizenship. Peace meaning-making refers to students’ active construction of peace-related understanding through artistic exploration, dialogue, reflection, and digital communication. Peace literacy refers to students’ ability to understand, interpret, and communicate ideas related to peace, conflict, justice, empathy, cooperation, and coexistence.

Creative agency refers to students’ capacity to make artistic, ethical, and interpretive decisions. Intercultural dialogue refers to respectful communication across cultural, linguistic, religious, ethnic, and social differences. Digital citizenship refers to responsible, ethical, and critical participation in digital environments, including the ability to communicate respectfully, evaluate content critically, recognize misinformation, protect authorship and privacy, and use digital tools for constructive purposes (Chen et al., 2021; Choi, 2016; Choi et al., 2017; Jones and Mitchell, 2016; Ribble et al., 2004).

5.3 Target educational levels and implementation contexts

The primary target group for initial implementation is learners in upper primary, secondary, tertiary, and teacher education settings. The model is most suitable for contexts in which learners have sufficient cognitive, emotional, and communicative maturity to engage reflectively with themes such as conflict, identity, justice, empathy, cultural difference, and responsible digital communication. For younger learners, the framework should be adapted through developmentally appropriate themes such as friendship, fairness, cooperation, kindness, classroom belonging, and respectful communication. More politically charged, historically sensitive, or trauma-related themes are more appropriate for older students, university learners, and teacher education programs, where guided critical reflection and ethical dialogue can be more systematically supported.

The framework may also function differently in conflict-affected, post-conflict, and non-conflict-affected societies. In conflict-affected or post-conflict settings, implementation should proceed with stronger trauma-informed safeguards, symbolic distance, voluntary sharing, narrative plurality, and careful attention to local histories and contested memories. In non-conflict-affected contexts, the framework may function more preventively by developing peace literacy, intercultural sensitivity, global citizenship, ethical media participation, and digital responsibility before conflict becomes normalized. Peace pedagogy in societies shaped by conflict requires sensitivity to teacher readiness, learner identity, collective memory, institutional constraints, and the risk of reproducing social divisions (Kasumagic-Kafedzic and Clarke-Habibi, 2023; Zembylas, 2015). In adult and higher education settings, the framework may be extended toward more critical analysis of structural violence, reconciliation, civic responsibility, and social transformation, consistent with adult peace learning traditions that connect learning, agency, and social action (Isanovic Hadziomerovic, 2026).

6 Pedagogical process and design principles

6.1 Seven-phase pedagogical process

The framework may be operationalized through a seven-phase pedagogical process. These phases are not intended as a rigid intervention model, but as a flexible design guide for teachers who wish to translate the framework into classroom practice. The seven phases are peace concept activation, artistic encounter, self-determined inquiry, collaborative co-creation, digital and AI-supported exploration, exhibition with dialogue and reflection, and ethical reflective consolidation.

In the first phase, teachers introduce key concepts such as peace, conflict, empathy, justice, cooperation, dialogue, and global citizenship. In the second phase, students engage with artworks, songs, performances, poems, photographs, films, or digital media related to peace and conflict. In the third phase, students select peace-related issues that matter to them and formulate artistic inquiry questions. In this article, artistic inquiry questions refer to learner-generated questions that guide creative investigation and ethical representation rather than simple comprehension questions. Examples include: What does peace look, sound, or feel like in this situation? Whose voice is present or absent? Which symbols, movements, images, sounds, or narratives can represent conflict, empathy, or reconciliation without simplifying another community's experience? In the fourth phase, students co-create artistic responses through negotiation of symbols, roles, media, and meanings. In the fifth phase, students use digital or AI-supported tools to expand creative possibilities while critically evaluating generated material. In the sixth phase, students present their artworks through exhibitions, performances, digital galleries, or online portfolios. In the seventh phase, students consolidate learning through reflective writing, peer feedback, oral discussion, or civic action planning.

6.2 Design principles for implementation

Seven design principles guide implementation. First, art-based peace education should begin with clear peace concepts rather than vague messages such as “peace is good.” Second, art should be used as inquiry, not decoration. Third, learner agency should be built through opportunities to select themes, media, questions, and artistic strategies. Fourth, collaboration should be central because peace is relational. Fifth, digital tools should be used purposefully to support communication, documentation, exhibition, and intercultural exchange. Sixth, AI-supported outputs should be treated as provisional material for human interpretation, critique, cultural reflection, and ethical transformation. Seventh, assessment should consider process as well as product, including inquiry, collaboration, reflection, ethical reasoning, cultural sensitivity, and peace-related understanding.

7 Discussion: reframing art-based peace education through Multi-Gogy

7.1 From peace instruction to peace meaning-making

The Art-Based Multi-Gogy Peace Education Framework contributes to peace education by shifting the focus from the transmission of peace values to the active construction of peace meanings. It does not propose art as a simple instrument for producing peaceful behavior. Rather, it conceptualizes art-based learning as a structured, reflective, and ethically guided process through which students engage with peace as a lived, contested, and socially situated concept.

This shift is theoretically important because it prevents peace education from becoming passive or moralistic. It recognizes that learners bring prior assumptions, emotions, cultural references, and social experiences into the classroom. Through art-based learning, these assumptions can be made visible and examined. A student's drawing, poem, performance, digital story, or collaborative artwork may reveal how peace is imagined, misunderstood, desired, or contested. In this sense, peace meaning-making becomes both a cognitive and affective process.

7.2 From artistic activity to artistic inquiry

The second contribution of the framework is its repositioning of art from activity to inquiry. In many educational settings, art is used as a supplementary or decorative activity. While such activities may have expressive value, they do not necessarily lead to critical understanding unless they are connected to inquiry, reflection, and dialogue. Artistic inquiry treats artmaking as a way of thinking, enabling students to examine difficult questions about inequality, conflict, suffering, reconciliation, and cultural representation.

The framework therefore does not claim that any artistic activity automatically supports peace education. It argues that art becomes pedagogically meaningful when intentionally designed as inquiry. Color, image, movement, sound, metaphor, silence, narrative, and digital composition become tools for examining peace, conflict, identity, and responsibility. Art therefore functions as a mode of knowledge construction rather than as an ornamental feature of curriculum.

7.3 From learner participation to learner agency

The third contribution concerns the movement from participation to agency. Students may participate in teacher-designed activities without making meaningful decisions about the direction, content, or form of their learning. The heutagogical dimension of the framework addresses this limitation by emphasizing self-determined inquiry, autonomy, and reflective capability (Blaschke, 2012; Hase and Kenyon, 2000).

In art-based peace education, learner agency is essential because peace is personally and socially meaningful. Students need opportunities to select themes that matter to them, choose media that suit their expressive intentions, and formulate questions that connect peace to their contexts. Creative agency is therefore not merely artistic freedom; it is a form of educational responsibility.

7.4 From collaboration to intercultural co-creation

The fourth contribution lies in the shift from collaboration to intercultural co-creation. Collaboration is often understood as students working together to complete a task. In peace education, however, collaboration should be understood as a relational and ethical process. When students create a group mural, performance, soundscape, digital story, or exhibition, they must negotiate meanings, symbols, roles, aesthetic choices, and interpretive differences. These negotiations involve listening, compromise, recognition of difference, and respect for shared ownership.

The intercultural dimension is particularly significant. In diverse classrooms, students may bring different languages, religions, ethnic identities, cultural memories, and social experiences. A peeragogical approach allows differences to become resources for learning rather than barriers to unity. However, intercultural co-creation requires facilitation so that group artmaking does not reproduce dominant voices, silence minority perspectives, or simplify cultural identities.

7.5 From digital engagement to ethical digital peacebuilding

The fifth contribution concerns the movement from digital engagement to ethical digital peacebuilding. Digital tools are often introduced into education to increase motivation, access, or technological competence. However, digital engagement alone is insufficient for peace education because digital spaces can intensify polarization, misinformation, hate speech, stereotyping, and exclusion. Students must learn not only to use digital tools, but to use them critically, ethically, and creatively.

Cybergogy extends art-based peace education into technology-mediated environments where students may create digital stories, virtual exhibitions, multimedia peace campaigns, online portfolios, or intercultural exchanges. Generative AI tools may support brainstorming, visualization, translation, editing, and multimodal composition, but they may also reproduce bias, cultural stereotypes, inaccurate representations, or superficial narratives. For this reason, the framework positions AI-supported outputs as provisional material, not final knowledge (Miao and Holmes, 2023; UNESCO, 2022, 2023a).

7.6 Theoretical contribution of the framework

Taken together, the framework moves peace education from instruction to meaning-making, art from activity to inquiry, participation from involvement to agency, collaboration from group work to intercultural co-creation, and digital engagement from tool use to ethical digital peacebuilding. These shifts reposition students as active, creative, and responsible peace learners.

The framework also contributes to literature by integrating learning orientations that are often discussed separately. Pedagogy provides structure, heutagogy develops agency, peeragogy supports relational learning, and cybergogy extends learning into digital environments. Their integration creates a holistic model for peace education that recognizes peace learning as cognitive, aesthetic, affective, relational, ethical, and digital. The framework is not a universal formula; it requires contextual adaptation. Nevertheless, it provides a coherent language for designing and analyzing art-based peace education in the era of Education 6.0.

8 Ethical and practical implications

8.1 Ethical and pedagogical considerations

Art-Based Multi-Gogy requires careful ethical guidance because peace education may involve sensitive issues such as violence, discrimination, trauma, identity, religion, and cultural conflict. Teachers must ensure that dialogue remains respectful and psychologically safe. Students should not be forced to disclose personal experiences of conflict or trauma and should be allowed to engage with peace-related themes at an appropriate level of comfort and maturity. This is especially important in classrooms where learners may have direct or inherited experiences of conflict, marginalization, displacement, or discrimination. Critical peace education in such contexts requires teachers to work with emotion and memory without turning students’ personal experience into compulsory classroom evidence (Kasumagic-Kafedzic and Clarke-Habibi, 2023; Zembylas, 2015).

For practical implementation, teachers should use clear facilitation indicators when discussions involve controversial or potentially traumatic topics. These indicators include: establishing classroom agreements on respectful listening and non-ridicule; assessing learners’ age, readiness, and local sensitivity before selecting themes; using artworks, fictional scenarios, or symbolic materials as a first point of entry before inviting personal reflection; allowing students to choose alternative themes or modes of expression; avoiding any requirement that students disclose personal or family trauma; moderating disagreement through evidence-based, empathy-oriented questions; protecting anonymity when artworks or reflections are shared publicly; pausing or redirecting discussion when emotional intensity becomes unsafe; providing debriefing time after difficult artistic encounters; and referring students to appropriate pastoral, counseling, or institutional support when distress becomes visible. These indicators make the framework more usable in both conflict-affected and non-conflict-affected societies because they preserve student agency while protecting dignity, safety, and cultural complexity.

Authorship and originality are also important. When students use digital or AI-supported tools, teachers must clarify which parts of the work were generated, adapted, revised, or independently created. AI use should be acknowledged transparently, and students should understand that generated outputs may contain bias, cultural stereotypes, or inaccurate representations. If student artworks are displayed publicly, consent should be obtained and personal stories should be protected when necessary.

8.2 Curriculum design

The proposed framework suggests that peace education should be integrated across subjects rather than confined to moral education or civic education. Art, music, drama, language, history, social studies, and digital media can all contribute to peace meaning-making. Curriculum designers should include explicit learning outcomes related to peace literacy, empathy, intercultural dialogue, creative agency, digital citizenship, and ethical technology use. These outcomes should be supported by suitable activities, reflection prompts, and assessment rubrics.

8.3 Teacher education

Teachers play a central role in Art-Based Multi-Gogy. They are not merely instructors but facilitators, ethical guides, dialogue moderators, and co-learners. Teacher education programs should therefore prepare teachers to design art-based peace learning, facilitate sensitive discussion, support student agency, manage collaborative learning, and integrate digital or AI-supported tools responsibly. Professional development should address creativity, digital citizenship, AI literacy, cultural responsiveness, and assessment of creative processes.

8.4 Assessment

Assessment in Art-Based Multi-Gogy should be multidimensional. Traditional testing is insufficient because peace learning involves knowledge, values, skills, reflection, and creative expression. A suitable assessment approach may include reflective journals, artistic portfolios, peer feedback records, group collaboration rubrics, artist statements, digital or AI-use declarations, teacher observations, and self-assessment. Assessment should avoid claiming that students have become “peaceful” simply because they completed an artwork. Instead, it should examine evidence of reflection, understanding, dialogue, ethical awareness, and responsible communication.

8.5 Contribution to education 6.0

Art-Based Multi-Gogy contributes to Education 6.0 by integrating human creativity, ethical intelligence, learner agency, peer collaboration, and digital participation. It prepares learners for a future in which knowledge is not only consumed but also interpreted, negotiated, and communicated across human, cultural, and technological networks. Rather than treating technology as a replacement for teachers or students, the framework positions digital and AI-supported tools as resources for expanding creative possibility under human ethical control.

9 Limitations and future research

9.1 Limitations

As a conceptual article, this study does not present empirical findings. The proposed framework requires future testing in real educational settings. Its usefulness may vary according to student age, educational level, cultural context, teacher expertise, school resources, access to technology, conflict history, and the sensitivity of selected peace-related themes. Education 6.0 is also an emerging concept, and its theoretical boundaries are still developing. Therefore, this article uses Education 6.0 as a conceptual orientation rather than as a fully established educational paradigm.

Another limitation concerns digital and AI-supported tools. Access to technology differs across countries, schools, and socioeconomic groups. AI systems may reproduce bias or cultural stereotypes. Therefore, the cybergogical and AI-supported dimensions of the framework must be adapted critically and ethically. Finally, peace itself is complex to define and measure, and future studies should avoid simplistic claims that art-based learning automatically increases peace attitudes.

9.2 Future research

Future research can develop this framework in several directions. Empirical studies may test Art-Based Multi-Gogy through intervention studies, design-based research, arts-based inquiry, qualitative case study, mixed-methods research, or Delphi validation. Studies may examine students’ artworks, reflections, and dialogue as evidence of peace meaning-making. Comparative research may investigate whether multi-gogy approaches offer stronger engagement, deeper reflection, or richer collaborative learning than traditional approaches.

Further studies should examine teacher readiness, AI-assisted artmaking, digital citizenship, student authorship, intercultural co-creation, and the long-term effects of art-based peace education on empathy, dialogue skills, and civic responsibility. Cross-cultural studies are also needed to explore how the framework operates in different educational systems, cultural traditions, and artistic practices.

10 Conclusion

This article has proposed the Art-Based Multi-Gogy Peace Education Framework as a future-oriented model for peace education in the era of Education 6.0. By integrating pedagogy, heutagogy, peeragogy, and cybergogy, the framework repositions art-based learning as a multidimensional process of guided instruction, self-determined inquiry, peer co-creation, and digitally mediated peace communication.

The framework does not claim that art automatically produces peace. Rather, it argues that carefully designed art-based learning can create conditions through which students explore, negotiate, and express meanings of peace. Through artistic, dialogic, and digital practice, students can develop peace literacy, empathy, intercultural awareness, creative agency, collaborative dialogue, and digital citizenship.

The article contributes to peace education by offering a theoretical model that responds to contemporary educational challenges, including cultural diversity, digital communication, AI-supported creativity, and the need for ethical global citizenship. In the era of Education 6.0, peace education must prepare learners not only to know about peace but to imagine, create, communicate, and ethically co-construct peaceful futures. Art-Based Multi-Gogy offers a conceptual foundation for this task and invites future empirical research to test, refine, and expand the framework across diverse educational contexts.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Pragya Lodha, Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital, India

Reviewed by: Amina Isanović Hadžiomerović, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Magdalena Sasin, University of Lodz, Poland