A Comparative Analysis of Karplus Learning Cycle Model and Ausubel Meaningful Learning Model on Children's Environmental Pollution Cognition

Abstract

Environmental education aims to raise individuals who have the necessary environmental knowledge, positive environmental attitudes, and active participation in the solution of environmental problems. It is necessary to use an effective teaching model in environmental education. The study aims comparing the academic success of secondary school students in teaching environmental problems in the light of Karplus's learning cycle model (Inquiry) and Ausubel's meaningful learning model (Direct) in terms of metropolitan-centred students (experimental group) and rural-centred students (control group). In addition, the important thing in questioning is to reveal the relationship of prior knowledge with open-ended questions asked by metropolitan-centred students. In this study, 164 5th-grade students' thoughts on environmental problems, their level of producing solutions, and their academic achievements were examined. A mixed design was used in the research. A case study, which was one of the research methods, was used for qualitative data, and an independent sample t-tests and paired sample t-tests were used for quantitative data. During the data collection process, the experimental and control groups were given a pre-test before the application, then news videos containing environmental problems were watched by the experimental group, while the control group was taught with universal visuals. At the end of the lesson, the same achievement test was applied to both groups as a post-test and the change was examined. The whole application took a total of 8 lesson hours for both groups. As a result of the study, a statistically significant difference was found between the achievements of the experimental group students and the success of the control group students. In the qualitative data of the experimental group students, it was observed that they mostly commented on water pollution, air pollution, and forest destruction. In addition, the problems that individuals perceived least correctly were the visual pollution, noise pollution, and light pollution, accepted as the normality of big city life intertwined with daily life. It is clear that student-centred teaching models, like the Karpus Learning Cycle model will further increase the learning and student’s awareness.