Özet:

The purpose of this study is to determine elementary school students' perceptions about environment through their drawings. The study was carried out during the spring semester of 2010-2011 academic year. A total of 429 elementary school students, including 68 fourth grade, 78 fifth grade, 97 sixth grade, 85 seventh grade, 101 eighth grade, participated in the study. The study was conducted by descriptive method and the data of the study were collected by draw-and-explain task. During the data collection students were asked to draw a picture of environment and explain their drawings. The results revealed that elementary school students usually draw humans, different kinds of plants and animals, constructions like houses and factories, abiotic factors such as mountains, lakes, sun in their drawings. Besides, 35.43% of students drew dirty, 59.21% of them drew clean and 5.36% of them drew both clean and dirty environments in their drawings. The results of the study also showed that with increasing age there is a decrease in the number of students drawing a clean environment and an increase in the number of students drawing a polluted environment. Students usually drew local environmental problems such as air pollution, soil pollution, water pollution and disordered urbanization. Based on the drawings it can be concluded that children see human as a part of the environment, think that they are affected by environmental problems as other living things and human based activities are the main causes of environmental problems.

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