Environmental Literacy in Turkey Primary Schools Social Studies Textbooks

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of study is to determine the level of a allocation of environmental literacy issues in social studies textbooks in elementary school 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th grade Social Studies (SS) textbooks that are published and distributed to schools by the Ministry of National Education in the 2010-2011 educational year in Turkey. For this aim, four social studies textbooks were examined. These textbooks are analyzed in terms of their level of “the environmental literacy issues,” in accordance with Roth's subcategories. In the research the analysis unit is determined as “the environmental literacy”. This analysis unit is divided into four sub-categories as “Environmental Knowledge”, “Cognitive Skills”, “Behavior”, and “Affect”. Content analysis method was used to analyses the textbooks. In other words, qualitative research method was preferred and all the themes of textbooks were studied by use of the content analysis method. Frequencies and percentages were used in the analysis of data. In this study, it is found out that social studies textbooks do not equally contain the components of environmental literacy and that the component of environmental knowledge is included much more than the other environmental literacy components.