PROMOTING SECURITY AWARENESS AND PEACE CULTURE AMONG SENIOR SECONDARY STUDENTS’ IN ONDO WEST LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA: STRATEGIES AND IMPACTS

Abstract

This study examined the strategies and impacts of promoting security awareness and peace culture among senior secondary school students in Ondo West Local Government Area (LGA), Ondo State, Nigeria. Anchored on Galtung's Positive Peace Theory and Bandura's Social Learning Theory, the study employed a descriptive and causal-comparative (ex post facto) survey research design. A sample of 300 senior secondary students (SS 1–SS 3) was selected from ten schools through stratified random sampling. The Security Awareness and Peace Culture Questionnaire (SAPCQ), a 48-item researcher-developed instrument structured on a 4-point Likert scale, was used to collect data. The instrument yielded a Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of 0.86. Four research questions guided the study, and three null hypotheses were tested at the 0.05 level of significance. Data were analysed using mean and standard deviation for the research questions, and independent samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with Tukey HSD post hoc test, and Pearson product-moment correlation for hypothesis testing. Findings revealed that diverse strategies for promoting security awareness and peace culture were perceived at a high level (grand mean = 3.64); that peace culture engagement differed significantly by gender (t = 2.98, p = .003); that conflict attitude change differed significantly across instructional strategy groups, with participatory groups recording higher scores than the lecture-based group (F = 6.43, p < .001); and that security awareness strategies were significantly and positively correlated with peace culture promotion and civic engagement (r = .634, p < .001). The study recommended the institutionalisation of peace education in the senior secondary curriculum, the adoption of participatory peace promotion strategies, and deliberate gender-inclusive programming by school administrators and curriculum planners in Ondo West LGA.