Investigating the effect of peace education program on the sixth grade elementary students' aggressiveness tendencies, empathy levels, and perceptions related to peace

In this research, the effect of peace education program on the sixth grade elementary students? aggressiveness tendencies, empathy levels and perceptions related to peace have been investigated.Pretest ? posttest control group quasiexperimental design has been used in the research. It is determined that, all the sixth grade classes of 100. Year Elementary School in which the researcher worked as a psychological counselor were selected as experiment group and all the sixth grade classes of 75. Year Elementary School were selected as control group. Peace education program which is composed of twenty four sessions were applied on experiment group two hours in a week. Before and after experimental treatment, Aggression Scale developed by Gültekin (2008), and Scale of Empathy for Children which was developed by Bryant (1982) and adapted by Yüksel (2003) have been applied on experiment and control groups. Moreover, with the purpose of investigating the perceptions of students in experiment group related to peace, semi-structured interview form prepared by researcher has been used.When the findings obtained in the research are examined, it is seen that peace education program is effective in increasing the empathy levels and decreasing the aggressiveness tendencies of sixth grade elementary students. In the interviews carried out with students; it is found that students gained awareness related to the concepts of peace and violence; their interpersonal communication and conflict resolution skills and relationships with their peers, teachers and families improved; additionally atmosphere of class and school became more positively.