PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

This study aims to examine how the concept of peace is understood by secondary education students in Turkey. For this aim, we employ Social Representation Theory as the theoretical framework. Social representations constitute the cultural codes of a reality shared by members of a society. A questionnaire composed of six open-ended items, on the meaning of and attribution towards peace, has submitted to a sample of students (N = 535). First, the primary corpus of data was analysed by qualitative content analysis. Results showed that peace is associated with a serene life, ideal individuals and ideal close relationships. Although the most of sample stated they are not in peace now, more than half of them think peace occupies a place in their every-daily-life. When it comes to the attributions, we show that state authorities (e.g., government, president, etc.) are the second most responsible subject following a generalised ‘individ- ual’ subject. Second, emergent themes were subjected to cross-tabulation analysis with demographics. Results affirmed previous research on the differentiation of representations of peace -also attributions- according to gender, age and additionally region of residence. The findings are discussed in light of relevant literature. This research is expected to help both policymakers and practitioners for probable peace programs in the future.