Investigation of the effect of maritime education on the development of maritime awareness among secondary school students

Maritime is of vital importance for the development of a nation. Maritime awareness shows the nation's interest in maritime. The study examined the effect of maritime education at the secondary school level on increasing maritime awareness. Students of secondary school age, aged between 15 and 18, were divided into groups. The first group consisted of civilian students, while the other group consisted of maritime students. Civilian students were divided into two groups again. A survey was applied to one group without any maritime training. The other group was applied a survey before the training, then given 2 hours of maritime training in a classroom environment, and the same survey was applied again after the training. Only the survey was applied to the maritime students. The survey was prepared as a "Maritime Awareness Survey" by taking expert opinions, similar to the surveys used in determining awareness and culture levels, by utilizing the studies in the literature. The data obtained according to the survey results were analyzed in the SPSS program. The relationships between the groups were examined by applying dependent and independent sample T-tests and ANOVA tests. Post-Hoc test was applied according to the ANOVA test results. According to these results, it was determined that students who had not received any maritime education and were not interested in maritime gained awareness about maritime and started to be interested in maritime after the maritime education they received. In the tests we conducted on the data we obtained before and after the education, significant differences were found between the groups. This situation revealed that maritime education was effective in developing maritime awareness in students.