Thought of War and Literacy of Peace: A Comparison between US and Turkey


Altıkulaç A.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATION AND LITERACY STUDIES, vol.12, no.2, pp.172-180, 2024 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)

Abstract

The main purpose of this research is to comparatively examine the views of social studies teacher candidates in Turkey and the USA towards war and peace, and to reveal the similarities and differences. In parallel with the increasing violence and wars in the world, literacy of peace has become a concept that attracts more and more attention. Each country includes war and peace issues in its curriculum in different ways. Literacy of peace has become one of the basic elements of citizenship education in democratic societies. Social studies is one of the most powerful components of citizenship education. In the social studies course, while trying to raise patriotic individuals by teaching about the wars of the past, they are also trying to raise democratic citizens who have gained peace awareness. The research is a descriptive study in which quantitative and qualitative research methods are used together. As a quantitative data collection tool, The Attitude Inventory Regarding Peace and War developed by Bizumic et al., was used. Moral dilemma stories were used as a qualitative data collection tool. Qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques were applied together to transform the obtained data sets into findings. Working group of the research is 60 teacher candidates in total, 30+30 each studying at state universities in Türkiye and the USA. Descriptive analysis method was used to analyze the data. A comparative analysis of participants’ perspectives on war and peace can give us an idea about how war and peace can be included in the teaching process. According to the results of the research, it was seen that the attitudes towards peace of the participants from both countries were high and when compared, the attitudes of the participants from the USA towards peace were higher than the participants from Turkey. The findings of the qualitative analysis also support this conclusion.