Reducing attitudes of prejudice and discrimination through literature: a quasi-experiment on the upper key-stage 2 students of the British schools in Karachi, Pakistan

ABSTRACT

This study aims to explore the efficacy of literature relating to Anne Frank to reduce children’s attitudes of prejudice and discrimination with respect to specific dimensions, including ethnicity and race, religion and gender. A quasi-experiment was employed with pre-post control design. The sample consisted of 100 students of the upper key-stage 2 (UKS2) level, recruited from the two British schools in Karachi. These schools represented an Experimental Group (EG) and a matched Comparison Group (CG). A research instrument titled ‘Muggles world of differences’ (MWD) was developed and validated. 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 Anne Frank related literature (AFL). Intervention was provided to EG, while CG studied similar concepts using a more standard method. Results of the pretest revealed a high level of prejudice and discrimination in both the EG and CG, with no significant difference (p > 0.05) in the overall scores, as well as in 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 in 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 related literature in reducing attitudes of prejudice and discrimination.

KEYWORDS:

• Peace education
• prejudice and discrimination
• Anne Frank
• literature

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. M refers to arithmetic mean while SD refers to standard deviation.

2. The higher the score is, the lower will be the level of prejudice and vice versa. A score of 90% or above would indicate a highly tolerant attitude.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Munir Lalani

Munir Lalani is an M.Phil. (Education) graduate from the Aga Khan University-Institute for Educational development (AKU-IED). He has experience of working as an academic coordinator and teacher in the British School System in Karachi. Currently, he is working as a lecturer at Notre Dame Institute of Education. His expertise includes Curriculum Studies, Peace Education, Educational Psychology and the teaching of History.

Sadia Muzaffar Bhutta

Dr.Sadia Muzaffar Bhutta is a DPhil graduate from Oxford University, UK. She is faculty at AKU-IED. Her specialisation areas include quantitative research methods, science education and health education.