The effectiveness of peace education on interpersonal relationships and academic motivation of female high school students

Theaim of this study was to determine theeffectiveness of peace education on interpersonal relationships and students' academicmotivation in aquasi-experimental method with apre-test-post-test design, taking into account theone-month control and follow-up group. The statistical population of the study was all female students in thefirst year of high school in District 19, Education, Tehran, in the academic year of 1998-99, amounting to 5901 people. The statistical sample size of thestudy was 40 junior high school students who were selected by purposive sampling.Thedata collection tool was the section on interpersonal relationships and academic motivation from the Academic Competency Questionnaire (ACES), Elliott and Diperna(1999). After performing thepre-test, theexperimental group underwent peace training in 8 consecutive 90-minute sessions according to thepeace education protocol, and thecontrol group did notreceive any training in thisarea. Finally, both groups were tested for interpersonal relationships and academic motivation (post-test). After one month, both groups were exposed to thesame test again (follow-up). Data were analyzed by repeated measures analysis of variance and Bonferroni post hoc test. Analysis of variance showed that peaceeducation explains 57% of variance changes in interpersonal skills scores and 46.1% variance variations in academic motivation scores; Therefore,it can be said that peace education has been effective in increasing interpersonal skills and academic motivation of students. And this effect remained stable after thefollow-up stage (p <0.01). Theresults of thisstudy indicate the need to learn how to live together. Peace education has a positive effect on interpersonal relationships and students 'academic motivation, improvesstudents' interpersonal relationships inschool and increases theirmotivation tostudy.