PEACE EDUCATION AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN RIVERS STATE: THE WAY FORWARD

Abstract

The study: investigated Peace Education and Curriculum Development in secondary schools in Rivers state: the way forward. The study aims at determining the relationship between peace education variables of conflict resolution and human rights education and curriculum, development among secondary schools in Rivers state. two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study, Ex-post facto design was adopted for the study, the population of the study comprised of 5,875 teachers from senior secondary schools in Rivers State. A sample of 375 respondents were selected from 75 senior secondary schools in Rivers State using Krijeic and Morgan (1970) statistical formula for determining sample size: The instrument for data collection was a self-designed questionnaire titled Peace Education and Curriculum Development Questionnaire (PECDQ). The instrument was rated in accordance to the Likert scale of strongly agree, Agree, Disagree and Strongly Disagree respectively. The validity of the instrument was ascertained by experts from the Department of Guidance and Counseling, while the reliability index of O.81 was determined using test- retest method. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation for the research questions while Pearson product moment correlation was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. The major findings of the study revealed that, conflict resolutions and human rights education, significantly relates with curriculum development “in secondary schools in Rivers State. it was however, recommended that, peace education should be embedded in the curriculum as a subject in secondary schools in Rivers State.”