The effect of travel and observation based activities on environmental awaraness level in 5th year students

Since the existence of human beings, they benefit from the elements that make up the environment in which they live. Like many species, humans cannot live without air, water and land. Contamination of these environmental elements that make up the living environment is only recognized when it reaches a visible and dangerous level. Environmental problems both threaten human existence and make the world uninhabitable. In order to stop the catastrophe caused by these problems, people must give up their existing and usual habitual thoughts and behaviours. The change in behaviours necessitates the change of attitudes, knowledge and value judgments. Positive attitude towards the environment and the formation of value judgments are possible through environmental education. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of trip observation activities on the environmental awareness level of middle school 5th grade students. In the research, pre - test and post - test research design of the semi - experimental research model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The sample of the study consists of 5th grade students who are educated in a socio-economically weak public school in a province in the Central Anatolia Region. The experimental group consisted of 21 students (11 girls and 10 boys) and the control group consisted of 22 students (12 girls and 10 boys). In this study, the effects of environment-related excursions and observation activities on the level of environmental awareness of middle school 5th grade students during a school year were measured by comparing the pre-test and post-test environmental awareness scale scores. Mann-Whitney U test was used for the dependent groups and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test was used for the analysis of the significance of the difference between the scores. As a result of the statistical analyses, it was determined that the activities based on trips and observations did not create a significant change in the environmental knowledge, environmental behaviour and environmental attitudes of middle school 5th grade students. It is thought that this result may have arisen from the fact that the student group in which the study was organized may have perceived the trips and other activities within the scope of the study as entertainment rather than as education because of their low socio-economic level and because they had not participated in such trips before, too.