The teachers opinions about the effects of science and nature activities on the preschool children’s acquisition of environmental awareness

The preschool age is the period in which children develop so fast in terms of cognitive, socio-emotional, physical, psychomotor, language and aesthetic areas. This period is quite important for children to acquire environmental awareness, as well as basic habits and skills. The studies so far have pointed out that children are influenced mostly by environmental problems. In fact, to live in a clean and healthy world is a crucial requirement for children. Thus, to let children develop healthy in all areas and to create a strong future while keeping the ecological balance, it is crucial for the children to gain environmental awareness in the preschool period. In that sense, science and nature activities in the preschool education program play a significant role for children in this period to develop environmental awareness. Because, science and nature activities consist of some specific activities related to the development of environmental awareness and they make significant contributions to its development a lot. In this study, it is aimed to determine the teachers? opinions about the effects of science and nature activities on the preschool children?s acquisition of environmental awareness. This study was conducted in 2005-2006 academic year in Eskisehir; in six independent kindergarten and 12 primary schools which were selected according to socio-economic levels. A survey model was applied and 24 kindergarten teachers were interviewed in this study. The data in this study were collected using semi-structured interview technique, which is one of the qualitative data collection methods. For the analysis, descriptive analysis technique was employed and qualitative data were transformed into quantitative data. Then, the findings were interpreted based on the frequencies. According to the results of the study, the kindergarten teachers? opinions about the environmental awareness overlap the concept of environmental awareness. Furthermore, it was indicated that the teachers mostly employ science and nature activities to develop awareness about environment among children, and hence these activities are considered as effective. Moreover, it was concluded that investigation trips and planting, as kinds of science and nature activities, were effective for children to acquire environmental awareness. Furthermore, according to the teachers, science and nature activities help children to acquire positive behaviors towards environmental awareness. Thus, it was reported that students were encouraged to protect livings in the nature while loving and valuing them. Instead of harming livings or destroying nature, these activities encouraged the students to protect and keep clean while having the environment responsibilities to feed and grow livings, even warning other people who misbehave.