4.1 Engaging Values and Attitudes
Even though it was not designed specifically for families, CCMT KASH showed a great success in impacting attitudes related to family life. This strength should be explored and developed for the Peaceful Families Program (PFP) KASH, including looking for ways to help existing programs integrate lessons that transform attitudes. Similarly, PFP KASH should include learning tasks that encourage participants to explore key values and attitudes relevant to family conflict and violence but that were not included in CCMT.
1. PFP KASH should have strong continuity with CCMT KASH but with specific application to the family context.
2. Lessons from CCMT KASH that were identified as relating to engaging values and attitudes include: a Judeo-Christian theology of peace, Power & Control, and Identity. However, the value of empathetic listening also appeared to be transformative of several key attitudes related to equality, respect, and use of power. CCMT lessons should be reviewed to identify what values and attitudes are assumed and how the lessons teach those values to participants so that the methodology can be replicated.
3. Gender roles and stereotypes should be specifically addressed in PFP KASH, but the topic should be approached in a nonjudgmental, exploratory fashion. For example, participants could be encouraged to consider: What gender stereotypes do they believe? How do those stereotypes influence family life and conflict? What needs are they trying to meet by conforming to or rejecting gender stereotypes?1 The CCMT lesson most related to gender is Identity.
4. Gender is also closely related to issues of Power & Control. PFP KASH should help participants cultivate deeper understandings of power, especially positive models of power and how they apply to family life. What kind of power does a wife/mother have? A father? A child? A mother-in-law? And how can these be used in ways besides ‘power over’?
5. Trust was also identified as a key element in family conflict and violence and is related to the attitudes and experiences of Cambodian families. PFP KASH should include an awareness of how trust and mistrust impact family conflict, sources of trust and mistrust, recognition of functional and dysfunctional mistrust (especially when families have suffered violence), and how families build trusting relationships.
6. Engaging values and attitudes should not be at the expense of cultivating knowledge and skills. In the family context, cases had a high understanding of CCMT Knowledge and Attitudes but a lower application of Skills (e.g., cases understood empathy but struggled to communicate empathy during role plays). Participants need more role play opportunities to practice skills, including switching from third party positions in role plays to the role of a conflicting party.
