The effect of the respect for diversity education program on the levels of respect for diversity and empathic tendencies of primary school students

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of the Respect for Diversity Training Program developed for primary school students on students' respect for diversity attitudes and empathic tendencies. In this study, a quasi-experimental design with pre-test, post-test and follow-up test control and placebo groups was used. The independent variable of the research is the Respect for Diversity Training Program applied to the experimental group. The dependent variables of the study are the students attitude of respect for diversity and their empathic tendencies. Respect for Diversity Scale and Ka-Si Empathic Tendency Scale were administred to three groups as pre-test, post-test and follow-up test in the program. The participants of this study are 24 third grade students (9 experimental group, 7 placebo, and 8 control group) who were continuing their education in a public primary school in one of the central districts of Konya in 2020-2021 academic year. An 8-week Respect for Diversity Training Program, which was prepared by the researcher was administred to the experimental group. At the same time, with the placebo group, sessions that did not involve activities about respect for diversity were implemented. No intervention was made to the control group. According to the results of the Friedman Test conducted to test the significance of the difference between the pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group, it was found that there was a significant difference between respect for differences scores, but no significant difference between empathic tendency scores. In other words, while the program applied increased the experimental group's level of respect for diversity, it did not affect the empathic tendency levels. When the pretest and posttest scores of the placebo and control groups were analyzed, no significant difference was found. When the follow-up test scores applied six weeks after the post-test were analyzed, it was observed that the significant difference obtained for the respect for differences test in the experimental group was preserved in the post-test. According to the Kruskal Wallis H Test results for the analysis of the post-test scores of the experimental, placebo and control groups, a significant difference was found between the groups. However, according to the Bonferroni-corrected Mann-Whitney-U test, which was performed to determine which two groups the difference originated from, no significant difference was found in pairwise comparisons.