Influence of animation-supported project-based instruction method on environmental literacy and self-efficacy in environmental education

Human beings always failed to recognize the damage they caused to the nature and the environment starting with the very first ages in history. Even after they got aware of it, they ignored this damage for ages. However, today, the damage has increased to such a great extent that it can not be disregarded or ignored. Thus, modern societies have tried hard to make their individuals conscious of environmental protection and of related problems either in written or in oral form. Even if all possible precautions are taken in such areas as technology, law, politics and economy to solve environmental problems, it is a clear fact that environmental problems can never be solved unless a sustainable society is formed and unless important changes occur in people’s life styles (Selvi, 2007). Therefore, in the international society in recent years, it has now been approved that it is important to inform people about the environment and about environmental problems via effective, environmental, lifelong education (Atasoy and Ertürk, 2008). In literature, there are a number of definitions of environmental education that will raise individuals’ awareness to avoid the environmental problems caused by today’s conditions and to have a clearer environment. UNEP/UNESCO/ OECD Paris (1992) defines environmental education as “a permanent process in which individuals gain awareness of their environment and acquire the knowledge, values, skills, experiences, and also the determination which will enable them to act individually and collectively to solve present and future environmental problems… as well as to meet their needs without compromising those of future generations”. Dooms (1995) defines environmental education as the process of developing the attitudes, values, knowledge and skills to understand and protect their environment and their biophysical surroundings.

Environmental education should not only provide related information and form the feeling of responsibility but also influence human behavior. Today, activities for raising environmental consciousness focus on the development of such concepts as environmental literacy and self-efficacy, which are both important factors in making individuals conscious of the environment and in activities related to environmental education. First of all, to define these two important concepts, Mc Beth (1997) refers to environmental literacy as individuals’ levels of ability, motivation to use critical thinking skills and take important roles to solve problems about environmental issues. Morrone et. al. (2000) state that one can not be said to be environment literate unless knowledge about the environment is transformed into behavior. This can be achieved by providing individuals with scientific information in environmental education courses. The concept of self-efficacy is defined as individuals’ awareness of what they can do when they benefit from their abilities and skills (Pajares, 2002; Senemoglu, 2005). A person with a higher level of self-efficacy will demonstrate a higher level of performance (Gist, 1989). If the goal is to provide future generations with a healthy and clean environment, then it is important to train individuals who are environment literate and who have self-efficacy in environmental education. Therefore, educational institutions should focus on this issue and apply methods and techniques that will positively influence both environmental literacy and self-efficacy in environmental education courses. For this purpose, environmental education studies should be conducted with the help of student-centered and audio-visual materials as required by the current technology era in a way to address students’ affective, cognitive and behavioral domains. In this respect, the project-based learning method, which makes students active regarding them as the center of education and which allow learning by doing, has gained great importance in education. Studies conducted revealed that the project-based learning method had positive effects on the development of such affective and cognitive dimensions of students as attitude, achievement and self-efficacy (Yavuz, 2006; Çibik, 2009; Tertemiz and Sahinkaya, 2010). The project-based learning approach, which supports visual learning, allows the student to take responsibility and to think and places the student in the center of learning, was supported with the current technology. Parallel to this, computer-aided instructional approaches have become fairly widespread in recent years. Computer animation programs used for educational purposes are quite influential in terms of supporting learning visually. Animations are used to present the content of a certain subject to students. According to Akçay et al. (2003), animations can visualize and concretize abstract concepts and thus increase students’ attention, and perception and comprehension. In addition, animations make the invisible micro world visible and allow us to see long functional processes in a short time. Rotbain et al. (2008) suggest using computer animations in education that allow rich and appropriate visualizations related to dynamic processes which mostly make it difficult to understand the information via direct instruction. For the methods and techniques used in educational studies, use of current technologies that make the individual active will not only help make permanent the behavioral changes that the individual is expected gain affectively and cognitively but also allow synthesis and application of these changes to other situations. In this respect, the present study investigated the influence of both technology-based and project-based learning approaches to environmental education on teacher candidates’ levels of self-efficacy perceptions and environmental literacy regarding environmental education.