Investigation on attitudes and opinions related peace of primary education program students

The aim of this research is to assess the attitudes of the primary education program students towards peace in the light of some variables and to uncover the students' views on peace. In the research, an exploratory sequential mixed design model has been used. Separate working groups/samples are determined for each sub-problem of the research. The data of the research are collected with the course contents of the education faculties in Turkey related to Peace Education, personal information form, interviews, and "Peace Attitude Scale" developed by the researcher. The reliability coefficient of Cronbach's Alpha of the developed Peace Attitude Scale is calculated as 0.89. Quantitative and qualitative data have been analyzed separately during the research period. During the analysis of quantitative data, statistics package program is mainly used and t-test is used for independent samples and one-way analysis of variance is used for independent samples in order to see the effect of determined variables on students' peace attitudes. Qualitative data are analyzed by content analysis and evaluated with quantitative results.According to the results of the research, it is found that gender, mother's level of education, geographical region, political opinion, the number of news source types, and the follow-up time of news significantly affect the peace attitude. In addition, as a result of the joint evaluation of the findings obtained from the quantitative and qualitative data, it is concluded that each political view has a rational basis, but students who define themselves as left-winger are more peaceful than students who define themselves as nationalist or conservative. Students, who define themselves as nationalistic, consider the differences that will bring peace to be dangerous because of the potential for harm. Conservative students do not accept differences. It is thought that these situations of not accepting differences and considering the differences hazardous adversely affects the attitudes of peace. At the end of the research, it is recommended that a multiculturalism and peace education, which considers the conflict as a rational action as well as an emotional one and is planned considering universal values and social problems, should be mandatory for all primary education program students and for a more peaceful society, it is recommended that women should have more say in all areas of society.