A research on raising sustainable environmental awareness in life sciences lesson

In order for the life of the world we live in to be long, existing natural resources must be used consciously and economically. For this purpose, it is necessary to raise individuals who can identify the problems around them, find solutions to the problems, protect the richness of the environment, contribute to the sustainability of the environment and have high environmental awareness. For this, environmental awareness should be created from an early age. In this context, the aim of this research is to raise sustainable environmental awareness among 3rd grade primary school students within the scope of the Life Sciences course. In addition, it is aimed to determine the effects of the implemented activities on students' attitudes towards the Life Sciences course, their attitudes towards the environment and environmental awareness, as well as to evaluate the implementation process based on student opinions. Apart from these, it is hoped that the activities implemented to create sustainable environmental awareness will contribute to researchers and practitioners in creating environmental awareness. Embedded design, one of the mixed research methods, was used in the research. In the quantitative dimension of the study, a quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest control group was used, and in the qualitative dimension, a basic qualitative research design was used. The implementation process of the research continued for a total of 6 weeks in the 2nd Term of the 2022-2023 academic year, and lessons were conducted through lesson plans created by the researcher. The study group of the research consists of 40 3rd grade primary school students studying in a town of Afyonkarahisar in the 2nd semester of the 2022-2023 academic year. All students studying in these two classes participated in the quantitative part of the research. The experimental group consists of a total of 20 students, 10 girls and 10 boys, and the control group consists of a total of 20 students, 11 girls and 9 boys. In the qualitative dimension of the research, all students in the experimental group kept course diaries. Additionally, a researcher diary was kept by the researcher. Interviews were held with the students in the experimental group. The diaries were analyzed with content analysis and treated as documents. For the interviews, data were collected with a semi-structured interview form from 9 students whose academic success was good, average and not at the desired level, determined by maximum diversity sampling, one of the purposeful sampling methods. The quantitative data of the research were obtained using the "Life Science Attitude Scale, Primary School Environmental Attitude Scale and Primary School Environmental Awareness Scale". In the analysis of quantitative data, Mann Whitney U was used for vii comparisons between groups; Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used for intra-group comparisons. Considering the results obtained from the research, according to the findings of the "Life Science Attitude Scale" applied to the experimental and control groups, there is no statistically significant difference compared to the posttest scores obtained from the overall scale. However, according to the qualitative findings, it can be said that the students developed positive attitudes towards the Life Sciences course. According to the findings of the "Primary School Environmental Attitude Scale", there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control groups in the overall total of the scale and in the posttest scores for the "positive environmental behaviors" subdimension according to the scores obtained from the sub-dimensions of the scale, while the primary school environmental attitude scale of the experimental and control groups, There was no significant difference between the posttest scores for the "environmental knowledge and awareness" and "negative environmental behaviors" sub-dimensions. There is no statistically significant difference according to the posttest scores obtained from the general and sub-dimensions of the applied "Primary School Environmental Awareness Scale". However, there is an increase in favor of the experimental group in the sub-dimensions "life in nature", "sustainability of living things" and the ordinal total scores of the overall scale. Apart from these, according to the student diaries written at the end of the applied lesson plans, the researcher's diary and the qualitative findings obtained from the interviews with the students, it can be said that the students' attitudes towards both the Life Sciences course and the environment have increased positively. Additionally, according to the qualitative findings, it can be said that students' environmental awareness has increased positively. Keywords: Life Sciences, sustainable environment, environmental awareness, attitude, primary school students.