World from children’s eyes: This is our World!

Abstract

Knowledge and awareness of environmental and ecological issues, and the propensity to think and care about these issues from a wide perspective, i.e., environmental consciousness, are necessary, and can be improved by environmental education. This study aims to evaluate and improve environmental consciousness of children. This work shows the preliminary results of a workshop entitled ‘This is our world’. In this context, in the first stage, how the children see the world that they are living in is researched by examining their answers to the question ‘What kind of a place is the world?’ In the second stage, the children answered the question ‘What kind of a world do we want?’ and presented their ideas about the world they dream to live in. In the third stage, the children designed on balloons, which represented the world. Their answers and designs were collected via a semi-structured interview form and two- and three-dimensional visual materials, i.e., pictures and models. The data were evaluated through keywords related to their conceptual development and environmental consciousness. Content analysis and semiotic analysis were applied to the data. In addition, the written data, the visual data and the analysis results were triangulated to test for consistency between the data and analysis results. In conclusion, how to build a healthy world was examined by deciphering the children’s dream world.

Keywords: Environmental education, environmental perception, environmental consciousness, children