Revista de Artes e Ciências Sociais

Examination of Environment Protection Awareness Levels of Pre-Schoolers in Turkey

Abstract

Seher Ersoy Quadiri and Tülay Şener

In this study, nursery school students were trained on “recycling of solid wastes” to develop their environment protection awareness. The study was designed with a pre-test post-test experimental model with a control group, which is one of the experimental study paradigms. The study involved 6-year old children attending two different nursery schools in Konya city center during 2009-2010 education year in Turkey. One of the two schools is located in a high socio-economic region and the other in a low socio-economic region. The sample group is composed of 120 students of which 60 students in the experimental group come from two classes in one school, and the other 60 students from two classes in the other school. In the analysis of the data, pre-test and post-test average scores of the students on the Recycling Scale and standard deviation of their distributions were calculated, and t-test was administrated to see if the difference is significant. The experimental group was instructed for 5 weeks with various simple environmental protection methods. After the instruction period, it was determined that the students in the experimental group outscored the students in the control group on the post-test. Thus, it was concluded that the instruction given was effective. Besides, it was found that recycling awareness level of students who received environmental education varied according to their socio-economic levels. Students from the school located in high socio-economic region were found to be more successful.