The Effect of Poster Activities on Learners Intellectual Structure in the Environmental Education

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the effect of poster activities on learners' intellectual structure in the environmental education. In this process, it has tried to reveal whether the porter activities have an effect on the teaching of identified environmental issues using a word association test, drawing concept network map and interpreting concepts and connections between concepts in their mind in order to concretely illustrate the changes in learners' intellectual structure at the beginning and at the end of the study. The method of the study is pretest-posttest control group design in the experimental method. The study sample consists of 62 thirdgrade students (experimental group 30, control group 32) studying in the department of Science Education, Faculty of Education, Gaziosmanpasa University in Tokat. In this process, the subjects were randomly assigned to two groups. In the research study, the word association test (WAT) and concept network map technique were used in order to reveal the difference of intellectual structure between the experimental group to which the poster activity was applied and the control group to which the poster activity was not applied. According to the research findings; it is found out that the poster activities has developed very important skills such as improving the intellectual structure related to the environment and contributing to meaningful learning.Keywords: Poster Activities, Teacher Candidates, Environmental Education, Intellectual Structure, Word Association Test. IntroductionThat many important issues such as environmental awareness, environmental issues and the role of people in environmental protection have been predominantly included in the curriculum necessitate learning all of these issues by doing, living and thinking with student-centered approaches. Given the environmental education taking part within the scope of programs implemented in our country in the past years located the environmental education, it is known that the rote learning was at the forefront, the education was limited to verbal-linguistic domain and therefore, ensuring permanent learning was insufficient. The lack of implementation is one of the biggest problems here (Kavruk, 2002). In this context, performing the main theme applications in environmental education learning is to achieve learning from everyday life and real life. The studies related to performance of the poster activities that students take responsibility in the process, do research and investigation, bring creativity into the forefront and achieve learning from real life and everyday life have come to the fore.Posters technique used in educational environments designed with powerful visuals. The images convey the message and develop students' creativity getting in touch with the curriculum (Hegarty, 1998;Seidman, 2007;Hubenthal et al., 2011). In this context, the posters provide the realization of meaningful and permenant learning in the class (Dunstan and Bassinger, 1997;Hubenthal, 2009;Hubenthal et al., 2011...