A research about the environmental awareness and participation in enviromental activities scores of the fifth grade middle schools students in Mugla (The case of Bodrum)

The purpose of this research is to investigate the levels of the environmental awareness and participation in environmental activities according to the demographic variables of fifth grade children such as; gender, education levels of mothers and fathers, having or not having a garden at home, planting seeds, following publication about environment. The research was carried out on 335 children which were fifth grade students in 2017-2018 academic year. 176 of the participants are female and 159 of the participants are male. As data collection tools; Environmental Awareness and Participation in Environmental activities which were developed by Yılmaz (2016) were used. The analyses were tested with SPSS 22.0 package program. Mann Whitney U test was used to test two independent groups and Kruskall-Wallis H test was used to test for more than two independent groups. Spearman Correlation test was used to determine the relationship between the Environmental Awareness and Participation in Environmental Activities scores of children. As a result of the analyses; Their environmental awareness scores have differed according to joining environmental activities, planting seeds and following publication about environment variables but it has not differed according to their genders, mothers and fathers education level variables. Also their participation in environmental activities scores have differed according to the gender, joining environmental activities, planting seeds and following publication about environment variables but it has not differed according to their mothers and fathers education level variables. When we look at the relationship between Environmental awareness and the participation in Environmental activitiesscores, there is a positive significant relationship. Keywords: Environment Education, Environmental Awareness, Participation in Environmental Activities