A research on determine whether the knowledge and practices of the students at the second level of elementary school to prevent enviromental pollution

ABSTRACT There have been various environmental problems arousing during the production and consumption processes which do not only demolish the balance of the nature but also have become a threat for the other living beings. Today, one of the basic reasons of those environmental problems is that the public has not been informed and raised consciousness adequately. Tomorrow's adults and today's children with their knowledge, skills, values, experience and behaviours will play an effective role in developing the society and providing a continuable life. This research has been planned to determine the properness and the adequateness of the knowledge of the 6th, 7th and 8th grade students' on preventing the environmental pollution and the way how they put this knowledge into practice, in addition to this,it has been planned to contribute to their knowledge on this subject and their environmentalist practice by the help of the instruction which will be applied. In the beginning of the study, a literature rewiew was establish a conceptual frame work. A questionnaires were developed based on literature rewiew for students. The sample of this research is formed by the 6th, 7th and 8th grades of a primary education school including totally 292 male and female students attending at a public school in Altındağ, Ankara. Data were analyzed by using SPSS for windows package program and frequencies were computed for each question. It was established that 44,9% of the students participated the research was girls and 55,1% was the boys. When the students' knowledge about the environment and environmental pollution was compared according to their gender by using the T test, there appeared difference in the girls' favour but just after applying the instructions on environment, it was determined that the difference between the girls and the boys had disappeared. mMoreover, it was seen that there weren't any important differences in both the girls' and boys' practising their environmental sensitiveness both in the pre-test and post-test. There had been a significant increase in students' knowledge on the environment after applying the instructions in all the grades, however, when examined in detail, it was seen that the significant difference in practising their environmental sensitiveness appeared in the 6 grade students. Key Words: Environmental Pollution, Environmental Education IV