Plant and animal awareness in nature education perspectives: Where is blindness?

Abstract

Awareness as a broad term is subject of many scientific disciplines such as psychology, education and biology etc. Thus the awareness study about our surrounding and environment can be called as a socio-scientific issues. The human species are often in interaction with almost all living and non-living things in the world. And we are not aware about these to some extent. The awareness changes according to the same variables such as mobility, color contrast and similarity to the human being. The living groups (plants and animals) come first rather than non-livings such as stones, water and air. It is the clear that people have higher awareness towards animals. Against plants and mushroom, the awareness is well below the desired level. In this study, it was tried to determine the changes in middle school students’ awareness towards animals, plants and mushrooms through nature education. Nature education connects individual with nature. During the education, students recognize livings in the nature and try to understand the importance of nature for a sustainable future. Within the scope of the study, 47 secondary school students were given one week of natural education. Students' answers were analyzed statistically. The pictorial information scales applied before and after the education reveal a significant increase in plant awareness, especially in a world where plant blindness is high.