Analyzing a Human and Environment Unit at the 5th Grade Science Curriculum within the Environmentally Lliterate Citizenship Context

Abstract

All the countries have an effort in cultivating environmentally literate citizens since the governments and citizens are responsible to protect the environment. Turkey is one of these countries which integrated environmental education topics and objectives into the science curriculum. Different frameworks have been developed to assess individuals' views about, attitudes and behaviors towards the environment and address environmental issues. These frameworks mostly focus on environmental literacy, but they do not emphasize environmental citizenship. Assessment of the curriculum through the lens of a framework that grounds on both environmental literacy and citizenship is important and needed in order to cultivate environmentally literate citizens. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the extent to which the newly developed science curriculum provided the opportunity to constitute environmental literate citizenship at the 5th grade level. We benefited a coherent framework grounded by environmental literacy and environmental citizenship in our inquiry to analyze the curriculum. Included among the data collection sources were curriculum documents, objectives, and learning and assessment activities at the 5th grade level. The data analysis consisted of two steps: (i) analysis of the objectives and (ii) content analysis of the human and environment unit at the 5th grade science textbook within the context of environmental literate citizenship. Our findings indicated that the objectives under environmental citizenship required social action and these objectives were associated with critical environmental literacy. In conclusion, the content had the potentiality to help students develop critical viewpoints about environmental issues from critical environmental literacy and justiceoriented citizenship aspects and take social action to make a change in their environment.