THE EFFECT OF THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION ON THE STUDENTS’ RESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR TOWARDS THE ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

The international meetings held have repeatedly demonstrated the importance of environmental education. The success of the thematic education approach has been demonstrated by previous studies and it is thought that this approach will also be successful in environmental education. Starting from here, in this study, the effect of the thematic environmental education activities on students' responsible behavior towards the environment was investigated. The study was carried out with 5th grade students studying in a public secondary school in the 2022-2023 academic year. In the research conducted in the quasi-experimental model, data were collected by applying the pretest-posttest to the non-random experimental and control groups. The data were obtained from the Behavior Towards the Environment Test form. The pretests and posttests applied to the experimental and control groups were subjected to descriptive statistical analysis (mean and standard deviation). Afterwards, the assumptions of the independent samples t-test were examined to examine whether the differences observed between the groups were statistically significant. According to the findings of the study, a positive significant difference was found in the environmentally responsible behaviors of the students studying with thematic environmental education activities compared to the students studying with the current curriculum.