A Survey on Peace Perceptions Among University Students in Albania: Implications for Social Science Curricula

Abstract

The main purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the field of peace education as one of the main pillars of peace studies through promoting and triggering Albanian students’ participation in building and sustaining a culture of peace in the society. It measures perceptions of Albanian students studying in social science disciplines, on peace and peace education. Additionally, it evaluates how much social science curricula in Albania have a peace orientation. The thesis is interested to note if there is a correlation between students perceptions of peace concepts and the rate of involving peace education themes into the curricula they study. In line with these, it has developed three main hypothesis: (1) Students perceive peace mainly as the absence of war; (2) Students perceive peace education as learning about ways of how to stop wars; (3) The majority of Social Studies’ Curricula do not have a peace education approach; (4) There is a positive correlation between students perceptions on peace terms and their involvement in social studies curricula. The thesis employs a quantitative methodology. It utilizes the survey research design, statistical percent distribution and Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Criteria of peace and peace education have been derived from the literature review. 18 main peace education themes have been used, coded and numbered from 1-18. The significance of results are measured through the Chi-Square and Phi- Cramer’s V tests. In addition the significance levels of the interference of the independet varialbes such as gender, institution and department are measured through Anova and Mancova tests. Results accept the first, second and the third assumption and reject the fourth one. Albanian students explain peace and peace education by referring mostly to negative peace concepts. Gender significantly interfers in whether students accept peace as the absence of war while department has a siginifcant interference level only at the question that measures their willingness to be part of peace activites. In addition to these results, 33.5 percent of curricula involve any of the peace education theme. The relation between the two set of variables is negative only for two peace education themes and insignificant for all the others. iv To conclude, the results do not mean that peace education does not impact peace knowledge. But, peace education does not make a significant change if incorporated only in terms of syllabus topics. this thesis reconfirms that raising peace awareness in the society requires a multi- dimensional approach with the involvement of all relevant actors and not only institutions of education.