Investigation of the effect of sustainable environmental education program on preschool children's attitudes

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of the Sustainable Environmental Education (SEE) program on children's environmental attitudes. The study aims to contribute to raising children as environmentally conscious individuals. In the study, embedded intervention design was preferred; in this design, qualitative and quantitative methods were applied together, sequentially and intertwined to examine the subject in depth. The study group of the research consisted of 38 children aged 60-72 months who were selected through purposive sampling and who were studying in an official preschool institution in Beylikdüzü, Istanbul. Qualitative data were collected using a "semi-structured interview form" developed by the researcher and analyzed using descriptive analysis method. Quantitative data were collected using the "Children's Attitudes Towards the Environment Scale-Preschool Version (CATES-PV)" and descriptive statistics and independent groups t-test analysis were performed with the SPSS package program. The results of the study showed a significant difference in favor of the experimental group in which a sustainable environmental education program was implemented. When the post-test results of the control group and the experimental group were compared, a significant difference was found in favor of the experimental group. The results of the qualitative analysis revealed a positive change in the environmental attitudes of the children who participated in the training and an increase in their ecocentric attitudes. Qualitative findings show that preschool children can perceive abstract concepts such as climate change, greenhouse effect and melting of glaciers. After the Environmental Education Program, children exhibited positive attitudinal changes especially in recycling awareness. These results show that the SEE program for preschool education has a positive effect on children's attitudes towards the environment. Since such programs are effective in increasing environmental awareness in preschool children, it is recommended that they be expanded.