Cognitive structures of university students about environmental education, climate change and consumption

In light of the findings, we determined which concepts were associated with the concepts of environmental education, climate change and consumer consumption and how those concepts existed in the cognitive structures of the respondents. The concept map shows how links between these concepts were formed. We found no difference between the differing majors of the students.

The participants emphasized the concepts of outdoors, nature and sustainability in relation to environmental education. In terms of climate change, they focused on the concept of global warming. The secondary concepts existing in the students’ minds in relation to environmental education were experiential learning, ozone layer, polar bears and melting ice caps in relation to climate change. In the section where the cut-off scores of the participating students were between 8 and 3, we observed that the students recalled more concepts associated with the key concept. In this cut-off interval, the students emphasized the concepts such as earth, preservation, conservation, teaching, recycling and awareness in relation to environmental education. They also emphasized the concepts such as rising sea levels, Al Gore, and oceans in relation to climate change. It is remarkable that the students uttered the word “bad” that is related to affective concepts in relation to the concept of climate change. The students emphasized the concepts such as America, waste, garbage, humans, food, eating and over-consumption in relation to the concept of consumer consumption. Another notable finding was that the students did not want to give the name of the country they lived in because of the negative impacts it implies toward consumption.

From the results, word association tests were found to be quite effective in the determination and evaluation of well-constructed and connected information webs in the minds of the students about environment-related concepts. They appear to be a good means of diagnosis.

These findings display similarities with past studies. Bahar, Johnstone & Sutcliffe (1999) administered a word association test to first-year biology students from Glasgow University following instruction in genetics. In that study, by means of the word association test, the students’ cognitive structures related to genetics were investigated. It was concluded that many questions in the multiple-choice tests could be good predictors of the relationships between their concepts of genetics. Bahar & Özatlı (2003) administered a word association test in order to investigate high school students’ cognitive structures related to the basic constituents of living organisms. The pre-word association test revealed that the preliminary information possessed by the students about the subject was too extensive when including irrelevant concepts. The post-word association test found that the students started to provide more scientific information. Nakiboğlu (2008) administered a pre-word association test and a post-word association test to pre-service elementary school classroom teachers about the subjects of the structure and theories of the atom. It was concluded that the word-association test could be used as an alternative to more traditional methods in the elicitation of the conceptual organization in knowledge structure. Ercan, Taşdere & Ercan (2010) conducted a study to investigate 7^th grade students’ cognitive structures and their conceptual transformation process about the subjects of the solar system and space. They found that the conceptual transformation of the students occurred in a positive direction. Uzun, Özsoy & Keleş (2010) employed a word-association test to determine Turkish pre-service teachers’ prior knowledge about biological diversity. They found that the pre-service teachers had a limited number of concepts about the subject. Cardellini & Bahar (2000) used a word-association test to map the cognitive structures of first-year university students from the Department of Chemistry Engineering about chemistry. The results of the word-association test administered before and after the instruction revealed that as a result of the instruction, a great increase was observed in the number of the response words associated with the key concepts (reaction, chemical equilibrium, chemical bond, reaction velocity, oxidation-reduction, molecule, solution, physical state and atom). Aydın & Taşar (2010) conducted a study to investigate the pre-service science teachers’ cognitive structures and opinions about the nature of technology. They found that the participants’ cognitive structures about the nature of technology, information about the definition of technology, mutual interaction between technology and society, and their opinions about the societal structure of technology showed a low level of conceptual knowledge.

Findings reported in the relevant literature reveal that this technique can be used both as a means of diagnosis and a conceptual transformation strategy by academicians and instructors working in science and other disciplines as an alternative to traditional methods (Hovardas & Konstantinos, 2006).