Analysis of secondary school students' views on climate literacy with data mining methods

This research aims to analyze the climate literacy levels of secondary school students according to the variables of age, gender, parental education levels, and the analysis of the opinions of secondary school students with the K-Nearest Neighbor algorithm and Decision Trees methods. WEKA analysis program was used in the research. The study group of the research consists of 422 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade middle school students in the second semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. The data of the study were collected with the "Climate Literacy Scale" (Görgülü Arı & Aslan, 2020) developed by Aslı Görgülü Arı and Kevser Aslan in 2020 with a reliability coefficient of 0.895 and proven validity and reliability, and the "Personal Information Form" developed by the researcher. The data were analyzed using K-Nearest Neighbor and Decision Trees, which are data mining methods. The data were analyzed and classified with Decision Trees and K-Nearest Neighbor methods in the WEKA program. The reason for using two different algorithms is that different algorithms can produce different errors. It is recommended to use the algorithm that gives the least error by calculating different error margins. Students' climate literacy was classified by K-nearest neighborhood and Decision Trees methods and error margins were calculated, and the most appropriate analysis method for the climate literacy scale was determined separately according to the sub-dimensions. According to the results of this study, gender, grade level and parental education level factors may be effective on climate literacy. It is seen that middle school female students' views on climate literacy are more positive and they have a better command of climate issues. Likewise, it was found that 7th grade students were more favorable about being climate literate than 5th, 6th and 8th grade students. It was observed that students' views on climate literacy increased with the increase in parental education level. In other words, we can conclude that students with higher levels of parental education have a more positive and conscious approach to climate issues. These results suggest that education and awareness programs may need to focus especially on female students and certain grade levels. In addition, raising awareness of families and parents on climate issues and guiding their children in this regard can play an important role in improving climate literacy. Increasing awareness of climate issues can contribute to raising individuals who are sensitive to the environment and aware of climate change. In line with the data obtained, suggestions have been developed for climate literacy to gain importance and value.