Peace education as a transformative pathway in EFL teacher preparation: a values-based ethical framework from the Chinese context

Anchored in the moral – intellectual tradition of China’s educational landscape, this study conceptualizes peace education as a transformative pathway for EFL teacher preparation. Drawing on Confucian virtue ethics, Freirean critical pedagogy, and Noddings’s ethics of care, it develops the Chinese critical onto-pedagogical model, which integrates ontology, epistemology, and praxis. Employing hermeneutic narrative inquiry, the study explores how pre-service English teachers cultivate empathy, moral reflection, and intercultural awareness through dialogic and reflective pedagogies. Findings indicate that peace-oriented EFL education reconfigures language teaching as a form of moral praxis rather than merely technical training. Theoretically, the study contributes a culturally grounded yet globally resonant paradigm for decolonizing peace education. Practically, it offers an ethical blueprint for re-humanizing teacher education in the emerging era of artificial intelligence and algorithmic rationality.