The effect of the intensive educational program including reuse, recycle and reduce (3Rs) environmental issues in preschool period on children's basic science process skills and environmental attitude and awareness levels

The aim of the study is to examine the effects of an intensive education program that includes activities based on basic science process skills covering 3 R (reduction, reuse and recycling) environmental issues on preschool children's basic science process skills and environmental attitudes and awareness levels. The research used a mixed research method. The research was conducted in a kindergarten affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in a district of a province in the Aegean Region. The study group consists of 38 students in four classes, two of which are experimental and two are control groups, due to the conditions of the Covid-19 outbreak. In the study, the convenience sampling method was preferred among the non-probability sampling methods. The data of the study were collected using the "Preschool Basic Science Process Skills Scale" developed by the researcher, the "Environmental Awareness and Attitude Scale for Preschool Children" developed by Soydan and Samur (2017), the "Teacher Interview Form", activity plans and video recordings of the activities. Additionally, the validity and reliability of the developed scale were examined. In the study, it was found that there was a significant difference in favor of the experimental group in terms of basic science process skills and environmental attitude and awareness post-test scores. In addition, it was determined that the percentile values of application of scientific process skills in activities increased over time in the experimental group. Finally, detailed information about the opinions and evaluations of the experimental group teachers regarding the activities in the intensive education program was presented