Abstract

It is important to adopt the concept of peace as a culture when human rights, democracy, coexistence and diversity are respected at the social level. Particularly at an early age, introducing this concept to individuals can prevent violent cultures from finding social or individual support. In this sense, individuals are expected to disseminate peace through education and to exclude violence. In this research, it was tried to show how primary school students perceive the concepts of peace and violence in their daily lives. It has been tried to determine how pupils describe these concepts in their pictorial image, literary and verbal expressions. The research was designed as qualitative research from qualitative research approaches. 68 primary school students participated in the research. Students have identified four main themes on the peace issue: “universal / inter-communal peace, inter-group / social peace, inter-personal peace and individual peace.” Twenty-five sub-themes related to these 4 main themes have been created. As for violence, four main themes have emerged: “socio-cultural violence, direct violence, group violence and ecological violence”. Sixteen sub-themes have been expressed, depending on these four main themes. It has been found out that in the general sense, they perceive the concept of peace mostly in a personal-individual sense and they directly perceive the concept of violence as socio-cultural violence.

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