Page 52 - Climate Conference - EBook 2023: Al-Qasemi Academy

One of the biggest issues facing the world today is climate change, and researchers, academics,
and decision-makers are concentrating on finding solutions to mitigate its negative impacts.
Additionally, some nations have developed curricula to teach students about climate change.
Turkish Ministry of National Education (MoNE) developed Environmental Education curriculum
(MoNE, 2015) in 2015, and it was updated in 2022 as Environmental Education and Climate
Change curriculum (MoNE, 2022). The new curriculum, an elective course for students in grades
six, seven, and eight, sought to increase students' understanding of the difficulties caused by
climate change and motivate them to take action to mitigate and prevent these problems. It is
considered important to analyze the new curriculum and compare it with the former one to reveal
what it has brought. This research aimed to compare Turkish 2015 Environmental Education and
2022 Environmental Education and Climate Change curricula in terms of their aims, content,
learning-teaching process, and measurement and assessment dimensions. Document analysis
was employed in this study as a qualitative data method. The 2015 Environmental Education and
2022 Environmental Education and Climate Change curricula served as the data collection
sources. Content analysis was utilized for data analysis. As a result of the analysis, it was
revealed that the new curriculum included fewer but higher-level goals according to Bloom’s
taxonomy. Initial units in both curricula shared the same content. In 2015, the curriculum placed
a strong emphasis on science and technology by challenging students to analyze global issues
and then discuss technical solutions that are beneficial to the environment. The addition of
climate change to the new curriculum introduced novel ideas like soil, food, agricultural, and water
literacy. The new curriculum still included a strong emphasis on technology, but students are
challenged to design projects instead of developing ideas. Furthermore, both curricula
emphasized out-of-school learning in addition to in-class instruction, as well as formative
evaluation in measurement and assessment aspects.
Keywords: Environmental education; Climate change; Climate change curriculum
References
Ministry of National Education (MoNE, 2015). Ortaokul çevre eğitimi dersi öğretim programı
(Middle school environmental education curriculum). Ankara.
Ministry of National Education (MoNE, 2022). Çevre eğitimi ve iklim deği ikliği öğretim
programı (Environmental education and climate change curriculum: Middle school 6, 7, 8th
grades). Ankara.