Examination of Kazakhstan's secondary education curricules in terms of environmental education

The increase in environmental problems in recent years has also led to an increase in the number of studies on the environment. Researchers emphasize that the first way to reduce environmental problems is to raise individuals with environmental awareness. The role of environmental education is great in raising people with this awareness. In this research, it has been tried to examine the environmental education in secondary education programs applied in secondary education institutions in Kazakhstan. For this purpose, the Kazakhstan education system, the curriculums of the secondary education courses were examined; Within the scope of factors such as acquisition, skill, and value to be given directly, it was tried to determine how environmental education was included in which course. The research was carried out in accordance with the qualitative research procedure and using the document analysis technique. For this reason, secondary education programs and resources related to these curriculums were obtained from libraries and the internet. After obtaining the curricula and resources, the secondary education programs of the country were examined in terms of structure and content. One of the basic values that the students to be educated according to the standards of Kazakhstan National Education are to raise environmentally sensitive individuals who have developed a positive attitude towards the environment. In this context, subjects such as the effects of environmental factors on living organisms, the impact of human activities on the environment, the characteristics of the nature of the regions, countries and the Republic of Kazakhstan, nature conservation and sustainable development, global and local environmental problems related to environmental education are covered in natural science, geography, biology, chemistry and physics courses given under the Natural Science branch. It was observed that the environmental education subjects, which started to be taught with the natural science lesson in the 5th and 6th grades within the framework of thematic areas in the courses, clustered mostly in the geography course in the 7th, 8th and 9th grades, and in this respect, biology, chemistry and physics courses followed the geography course. There are a total of 1170 learning objectives in all of the courses in which environmental education is given in Kazakhstan secondary education programs. The total number of learning objectives for which environmental education is given in these courses is 428. Therefore, in terms of learning objectives, 36.7% of the environmental education courses in Kazakhstan secondary education curriculum were related to environmental education.