Technology-assisted tolerance education at elementary schools within the framework of inspector qualifications

Abstract

The importance of tolerance is being seen as an essential virtue in contemporary societies and in this paper Cyprus sample was chosen as regards tolerance education. The two peoples of Cyprus with different language and religion but the same culture (Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots) thought that only politics could solve the deadlock after the 1974 war and the fact that the two peoples could be converged with education, especially tolerance education, was ignored. In this paper the intention is to approach tolerance education especially on the basis of education management for which reason inspectors are chosen as the study group. It was based on the execution of tolerance education with contemporary teaching approaches, especially in a technology-assisted manner. As a result, the research question was determined as “what is the status of technology-assisted tolerance education in elementary schools in Cyprus within the framework of inspector qualifications?” This is a qualitative research based on case study model. Participants of the study were chosen on a purposive-sampling and convenience-sampling basis. Thus, the sampling of the research consists of 20 educators (inspector, school manager, teacher and scholar) in Northern and Southern Cyprus in 2016–2017 spring semester. Ten of the educators were chosen from Northern Cyprus and the other 10 were chosen from Southern Cyprus. Data collection method used in this paper is “semi-structured interview” technique. Content analysis technique was used in the examination of the data collected in this research. A closer look at the research findings show that the opinions as regards usage of technology in tolerance education in elementary school are as follows: “preparation and usage of different materials in tolerance education”, “usage of positive examples of technology-assisted tolerance education outside Cyprus” and “including both technology and tolerance in every step of education programs”. When different opinions are taken into consideration, Greek Cypriots stated that awareness should be raised in children in environments without tolerance with technology-assisted education. Turkish Cypriots, on the other hand, emphasized that all stakeholders in education should have a technology-friend educator identity and in order to offer tolerance education their level of tolerance should be high in the first place.