Secondary school students' perceptions on global climate change

Global warming and global climate change are the leading environmental problems of the century we live in. Global warming and global climate change caused by global warming have an effect on occurring of many unusual nature events on Earth. The aim of our study is to determine the perceptions of secondary school students towards global climate change. In this context, we can aim to determine the global climate change awareness level in younger age groups and to define the effectiveness of the current program and the environmental deficiency of the secondary school curriculum. Qualitative research method has been used in our study. The research design is phenomenology. The universe of the research consists of all secondary school students in the central district of a province in the Central Black Sea region in the 2020-2021 academic year. The sample consists of students from two public schools in the district center by using the convenient sampling method, which is one of the non-random sampling methods. In the study, data have been collected by using a structured interview form, which is one of the qualitative data collection tools. In the study, standardized open-ended interview approach, one of the interview types, has been used. The interview form used in the study consists of two parts. In the first part, eleven questions consisting of scales have been asked to obtain the demographic information of the participant. In the second part, there are eight open-ended questions to determine the facts about global climate change. The data of the study have been gathered by the researchers during the face-to-face education period. The data of the study have been determined by using descriptive analysis and content analysis method. As a result of the study, it has been determined that the participants evaluate the global climate change more in the axis of drought, they have concerns about global climate change, but they can not differentiate between global climate change and environmental problems. According to the results of the study it can be suggested to increase the number of various activities and their positions and time within the curriculum to provide active learning on global climate change.