Peace Education Curriculum For Integration Into Senior Secondary Home Management Program in Rivers State

ABSTRACT

The main aim of this study was to develop a Peace Education curriculum for integration into senior secondary school Home Management programme in Rivers State. Specifically, the study sought to: determine objectives of Peace Education curriculum for integration into senior secondary school Home Management programme, determine content for Peace Education selected for Peace Education, find out methods for teaching Peace Education, determine instructional materials for teaching the content of Peace Education, determine the evaluation activities for assessing the achievement of the objectives of Peace Education curriculum for integration into senior secondary school Home Management programme. Seven research questions and three hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted R and D design. It was carried out in five phases as follows: Phase i: Collecting data for Peace Education curriculum, Phase ii: Development of Peace Education curriculum, based on objectives, content, methods of teaching, instructional materials and evaluation activities, Phase iii: Validation of the Peace Education curriculum, Phase iv: Testing of Peace Education curriculum using Peace Education Test (PET) and Phase v: Revision of Peace Education curriculum based on information and comments from phases iii and iv. The population was made up of 650 subjects involving seven members group discussion, Social Studies and Home Economics lecturers, Social Studies and Home Economics students, senior staff of Ministries of Women Affairs, Social Work and Rehabilitation and Youth Education and Development, Secondary School Home Economics and Social Studies teachers and Home Management students. Simple random sampling technique was adopted to select samples from large groups while no sampling was adopted for small groups.Total sample size was 495. Questionnaire respondents were 450. The following instruments were developed and used for data collection, namely: Focus Group Discussion Guide (FGDG), Peace Education Questionnaire (FEQ), Peace Education Curriculum (PEC), Peace Education Validation Questionnaire (PEVQ) and Peace Education Test (PET). The PEQ, PEC and PET were face validated. The reliability of Peace Education Questionnaire (PEQ) was tested using Cronbach Alpha reliability test to determine the internal consistency of the instrument and this yielded an overall reliability coefficient of 0.87, also, the reliability of the 50 multiple choice questions (Peace Education Test) was determined to be 0.91 using Kuder Richardson formula 20 (KR20), while Kendall‟stau_b was used to determine the reliability of the Peace Education Curriculum which was rated by three experts and a reliability value of 0.71 was obtained. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyze the research questions while Analysis of Variance was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings included 42 objectives of Peace Education, 37 contents were selected for Peace Education curriculum, 26 methods of teaching Peace Education, 35 instructional materials for teaching of Peace Education and 28 evaluation activities for assessing the attainment of Peace Education curriculum objective. The findings also showed that the developed Peace Education curriculum wan appropriate and effective. The findings of the study from the hypotheses showed that there was no significant difference in the mean responses of the respondents on the objectives of the Peace Education curriculum, contents selected for the Peace Education curriculum and the methods for teaching Peace Education in senior secondary school Home Management programme in Rivers State. Findings from Focus Group Discussion (FGD) revealed killing, kidnapping, armed robbery among others as peace problems in Rivers State and that, the effects of peace problems among others include unsafe life and driving away of foreign investors. The findings also revealed that youths are the major perpetrators of the problems and that, it was appropriate to develop Peace Education curricuilum for integration into senior secondary Home Management programme in Rivers State. Based on the validation of the curriculum by experts, the results of FGD and hypotheses tested, it was recommended among others that, Rivers State government should organize and fund adequately, serminars and workshops on the integration of Peace Education curriculum into senior secondary school Home Management programme. Seminars and workshops should also be organized for youths on Peace Education by the Rivers State government and that, parents should start early enough to teach their children how to live peacefully with one another.