The effect of out-of-school environmental education on 7th grade students' knowledge, attitudes and behavior towards biological diversity

This study aimed to determine the effect of applied environmental education carried out with 7th grade secondary school students on environmental knowledge, attitudes and behavior. The research was carried out in a quantitative research model, a pretest-posttest control group experimental design was applied, and a follow-up test was conducted 3 months after the last application. The study group in the research consists of 62 7th grade students studying in Serik district of Antalya Province in the 2021-2022 academic year, selected by the 'simple random sampling' method. The 'Knowledge, Attitude and Behavior Towards Environmental Education' scales developed by Avan (2011) was used as a data collection tool. Validity and reliability studies of these used scales were conducted, and the validity was obtained as 74.202% in the Environmental Knowledge Scale, 80.226% in the Environmental Feeling Scale and 76.454% in the Environmental Behavior Scale. Cronbach's alpha analysis values for the reliability of the scales were calculated as 0.865, 0.827 and 0.845, respectively. Before the start of the research, a pre-test was applied to the students in the experimental and control groups. Then, 3 hours of theoretical and 9 hours of practical environmental education were given to the students in the experimental group. After the theoretical and practical courses were completed, a post-test was applied to the students in the experimental and control groups. Data collection was completed by applying a follow-up test to the experimental group students 3 months after the last training. The collected data were evaluated using the quantitative analysis method. As a result of the normal distribution of the data was used to compare the experimental and control groups, and related samples t-test was used to compare the post-test results. In the post-test results, there was a significant positive difference in the attitude (P=<0.05) and behavior (P=<0.05) tests towards the environment in the experimental group. It is concluded that environmental education carried out in out-of-school environments may be more effective in the development of emotions and behavior towards the environment.