Abstract:

The increases in environmental problems in recent years have caused the increase in the number of research related to the environment. Researchers have emphasized that the first way to reduce this damage is to raise people who have environmental literacy. Thus, environmental education plays a crucial role in raising people who are environmentally literate. In this study, the place of environmental issues in primary school curriculum in Turkey has been determined. For this purpose; a) the courses that are related to environmental education have been specified, b) the themes, units and objectives in these courses have been determined, c) these objectives have been analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. As a result of this analysis, which has been carried out as a content analysis, the total percentage of the objectives related to the environmental issues is found to be 11.82%. It is also assertained that these objectives are concentrated on the primary concepts of environment and ecology, Earth's structure, natural disasters, depletion of the sources, environmental cleansing, climate and atmospheric events. Turkish primary school curricula, which focuses on these topics about environmental issues, resembles the Canadian curricula, because both countries give opportunities to the teachers to emphasize the environmental issues and problems in their lessons. Furthermore, it also resembles the Indian school curricula, because both of them realized the importance of environmental education and reflects this realization to their school curricula. Key words: Primary school curricula, environmental education, educational policies.

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