El Lenguaje gestual como dispositivo didáctico para la construcción de la cátedra de la paz en la institución educativa el tránsito, Arauca

Abstract

This research project explores gestural language and nonverbal communication as pedagogical tools to strengthen the Peace Education curriculum at the El Tránsito Educational Center, located in the PDET rural territory of Arauquita, Arauca. It stems from the need to critically examine school models that have prioritized the spoken word, verbal explanation, and the normative transmission of values, relegating the body, gaze, posture, silence, proximity, and gesture to a secondary role as legitimate forms of communication, learning, and building coexistence. In this sense, it recognizes that peace must extend beyond curricular content and institutional declarations; rather, it must lead to a practical and situated understanding, a sensitive and relational experience constructed through the daily interactions that reshape school life. From a critical qualitative perspective and using an action-research approach in the classroom, a didactic device was designed and implemented to redefine the Peace Studies curriculum through bodily, expressive, and reflective practices with sixth and seventh grade students. The process was organized into phases of diagnosis, action, observation, and reflection, allowing for an understanding of how gestures, gazes, tone of voice, postures, and silences intervene in the emergence, interpretation, and transformation of school conflicts. The device structured four formative axes: body awareness and sensitivity; nonverbal expression and communication; embodiment and coexistence; and integration and commitment. Through these axes, activities such as dramatizations, role-playing, gestural exercises, body maps of territory, reflective writing, analysis of school situations, and collective construction of awareness regarding gestures were developed. The findings demonstrate that nonverbal communication is a structural dimension of school life, especially in rural contexts marked by conflict, borders, and fragile social fabric. By teaching students nonverbal communication literacy, schools expand their capacity to recognize emotions, anticipate tensions, promote empathy, strengthen mutual care, and build agreements for coexistence based on bodily experience. In this way, the Peace Studies program shifts from teaching centered on abstract concepts to an embodied pedagogical practice, in which learning to live together involves learning to observe, listen, express, repair, and inhabit the school as a space for community building.