Evaluation of forest school practices in Türkiye

In this research, it is aimed to reveal how forest school practices are handled in Turkey and to what extent forest school practices can achieve their goals in Turkey by examining the opinions of teachers who carry out these practices in schools that implement forest school practices, including their perceptions of the forest school implementation processes. The research was carried out using 'Case Study', one of the qualitative research methods. The study group of the research was selected by the 'Maximum Diversity Sampling' application method, one of the 'Purposive Sampling' methods; The principals of 5 different forest schools were interviewed. The data of the research was obtained with a semi-structured interview form prepared by the researcher. The data of the research was obtained by conducting online and face-to- face (mixed) interviews with the participants. Among the findings obtained in the research, the establishment of forest schools was made by people of teacher origin. In this context, organizing outdoor and out-of-class trainings for teachers who are interested in Forest Schools pedagogy, introducing instructors interested in outdoor sports (sailing, rowing, mountaineering, climbing, etc.) to forest school practices or carrying out activities in cooperation with forest schools. In order to realize and raise awareness, suggestions were made to plan trainings by establishing connections with forest schools within the scope of in-service training in schools, and suggestions were made that a meaningful expansion could be achieved in Turkey by preserving the philosophy of forest school education.