Asian Research Thesis Index

Abstract

This study aims to explore the efficacy of teaching concepts of peace education with the literature on Anne Frank to reduce children’s attitudes of prejudice and discrimination in specific dimensions including: ethnicity & race, religion and gender. Quasi-experiment was employed with pre-post control design. The sample comprised 100 students of the Upper Key-Stage 2 (UKS2) level, recruited from the two British schools in Karachi. These schools represented Experiment Group (EG) and the matched Comparison Group (CG). A research instrument titled “Muggles world of differences” (MWD) was developed and validated. It was in a form of test with different questions aiming to measure prejudice and discrimination. It was administered on CG and EG, both before and after intervention. The intervention plan “Reading of Young Anne’s Literature” (ROYAL) was developed based on selected readings from the Anne Frank literature (AFL). Altogether, 15 lessons were taught to EG as part of “Personal Social Health Education” (PSHE), whereas CG studied the similar concepts using standard method for the same time duration.Results of pre-test revealed high level of prejudice and discrimination in both EG and CG with no significant difference (p > 0.05) in the overall scores as well as the specific content domains. However, the post-test of the two groups revealed that the students in the EG had outperformed their CG counterparts in overall MWD scores as well as specific content domains. The difference was found to be significant (p < 0.05) with the large effect size (r = -0.63). Results support the efficacy of teaching Anne Frank literature in reducing the attitudes of prejudice and discrimination. The results of the study are generalizable to the seven British Schools in Karachi. However, insights could be gained for other school systems.

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