Examination of children's ecological literacy levels: The case of Malatya

Ecological literacy is a pedagogical field that includes various disciplines, performs the necessary work to create sustainable lives, and has acquired the knowledge and skills as a basis. The education received by individuals is one of the most important factors in developing the level of ecological literacy and ensuring its sustainability. At this point, the most priority work that needs to be done is to determine the level of knowledge and perception of children about ecological elements. In the formation of these perceptions and their reflection on the basic activities of children, the form of communication they establish with the outside world and their experiences have an important role. Ecological literacy education is provided by the transition to the process learned by experiencing the taught contents one-on-one. In the research; children's perception of nature was examined, how to gain awareness of nature in early childhood, the adequacy of the educational model that will increase the level of ecological literacy, how and how integrated nature and awareness of nature are in children's educational processes were investigated through domestic and international examples, and the place of nature in the physical, social and social development of the child was examined and evaluated. Within the scope of the research; a literature review was conducted on the concepts of ecology, literacy, ecological literacy, ecopedagogy, environment and nature education, and the effects of educational processes that individuals need and affect their development were analyzed through these studies. In the research conducted to examine the ecological literacy levels of children, visual narrative studies were conducted on the way children perceive nature and these perceptions were confirmed as the level of knowledge by asking them to answer the questionnaire questions prepared by the researcher. The main purpose of this research is to conduct due diligence on children's ecological literacy levels and perceptions of nature, to evaluate, to determine what are the positive and negative factors and to conduct evaluation studies on them