The effect of story based environmental education program on 48-72-month-old children's environmental awareness and attitudes

The research was carried out to investigate the effect of the Story Based Environmental Education Program on the environmental awareness and attitudes of 48-72 months old children. In the fall semester of the 2019-2020 academic year, a total of 40 children (20 control and 20 experimental group) from Afyonkarahisar Erkmen TOKİ Nurullah Oymak Elementary School and Central TOKİ Elementary School constituted the study group. In the research, experimental design with pre-test-post-test with control group was used. The data needed were collected through "General Information Form", "Children Attitudes Toward the Environment Scale-Preschool Version (CATES-PV)" adapted to Turkish by Kahriman Öztürk (2010) and "Environmental Awareness and Attitude Scale for Preschool Children" developed by Büyüktaşkapu Soydan and Öztürk Samur (2017). In analyzing the data, Mann Whitney U test was used to determine the difference between the pre-test and post-test mean scores of the children in the experimental and control groups and Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks Test was used to determine the significance of the difference between the pre-test and post-test mean scores of each sub-group. As a result of the research, when comparing the pretest and posttest mean scores regarding the environmental awareness and attitudes of the experimental group children having participated in the "Story Based Environmental Education Program" implementations, a significant difference was found in favor of the posttest (p <.05). When the experimental and control group posttest mean scores were compared, it was found out that there was a significant difference in favor of the experimental group. In line with these results, it can be said that the Story Based Environmental Education Program is effective in gaining awareness and attitude towards the environment for 48-72 months old children.