The effects of peer helping program on the environmentally-friendly behaviors

The main purpose of this study was to explore the effect of peer-helping program on the environmentally-friendly behaviors of the students. The study was designated according to the action research experimenting on one group using qualitative data analysis with pre-test and post-test models.The study included nine students (4 girls, 5 boys) who were studying at a secondary school. The major instruments in the research were the Information Gathering Form, Environmental Attitude Scale, the Communication Skills Scale as pre and post-test, and follow-ups. Also, observation, semi-structured interviews, document analysis and the Evaluation of Communicative Skills Form were used. For the quantitative data analysis, Repeated Measures Tests and Mann Whitney U Tests, for the qualitative data analysis descriptive-interpretive analysis were used.The results indicated that the group members developed positive attitudes towards environmental issues and the results were supported with the qualitative data. According to the pre-test and post-test, and follow-up results, statistically there appeared no significant difference in the communicative skills of the group members whereas qualitative data analysis showed that the group members improved their communicative skills. Therefore, the study indicated that the application of the ten-week program had drastic effects on the environmentally-friendly behaviors and the communicative skills of the students. The data share similarities with the available literature.The studies conducted by the group members after ten-week treatment were evaluated based on the qualitative data. During the three-month-observation of the group members by the researcher, group members helped 55 students at school, and nine projects were conducted in 135 different atmosphere reaching 3397 students at school. The findings also revealed that the peer helping applications facilitate the productivity and the prevalence of the services held in the school guidance offices at schools.Key Words: Peer helping, environmentally-friendly behaviors, communicative skills, environmental education