Examining the impact of the global climate change training program on preschool children

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of the education program involving global climate change by applying it to the preschool age group. The experimental model with a pre-test, post-test control group was used in the research. The study group consists of a total of 40 children from the 5-6 age group, 20 of them in the experimental group and 20 in the control group. The “Global Climate Change Education Program” was applied to the children in the experimental group for 90 minutes, 1 day a week, for 10 weeks. The training program was carried out with the educational material “Hand in Hand for the World”, which contains educational questions and guidelines on global climate change developed by the researchers. In addition, the educational program was supported with pictures, animations, and songs that will create awareness about global climate change. A semi-structured interview form, which was prepared by the researchers and passed through 9 expert opinions, was used as a data collection tool. After expert opinion, the content validity ratio of 15 items is 0.778 and above. In the semi-structured interview form, there are a total of 15 questions with 3 sub-dimensions, including waste materials, recycling, and nature, which determine children's knowledge levels and awareness about global climate change. In the analysis of the data, a t-test was performed to examine the relationship between the experimental and control groups with the data obtained using the SPSS 26 package program. After the training, a significant difference was found in all sub-dimensions and total scores of the experimental and control group, including waste materials, recycling, and nature (p