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The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the levels of hazard awareness, risk perceptions, the knowledge of response-related protective behavior, and disaster knowledge within the framework of secondary school curriculum in Turkey. A questionnaire examining various measures including hazard awareness, risk perceptions, and general disaster knowledge test was answered by 8th-grade students of schools in Erbaa, Niksar, and Taşova located in North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) in Turkey. The data from a total of 654 surveys were analyzed utilizing chi-squared, t-test, and ANOVA.The research findings proved that students' disaster awareness and risk perceptions about the environment in which they live are quite realistic. The high levels of earthquake risk perception and fear were related to the fact that they live in settlements located in NAFZ with the highest level of earthquake risk in Turkey. However, research findings proved that most of the students had a fairly low level of knowledge of response-related protective behaviors, and significant differences were found in the context of schools and settlements. Key words: 8th-grade students, risk assessment, hazard education, disaster education, Turkey

Materialistic values are important factors that guide individuals' philosophy of life. For this reason, it is thought that individuals' environmental attitudes and ecological world views may be related to their materialistic values. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine whether there is a relationship between the materialistic and ecological values of prospective teachers. The study sample consists of 685 prospective teachers studying in a Faculty of Education at a university in northern Turkey. In the 2016-2017 academic year, prospective teachers who participated in this study were studying in first and last grade level of five different departments: Social Studies (n=115); Science (n=149); primary education (n=151); Mathematics (n=134); and pre-school teaching (n=136). A questionnaire including the New Ecological Paradigm Scale (NEPS), and the Material Values Scale (MVS) was used to gather data. The mean scores of both scales were based on the interpretation of the research findings, and the relationship between materialistic and environmental values of sample and variables such as gender, grade level, the field of teaching, and environmental education were examined. The correlations among materialistic and environmental values and environmental education were also examined. The results of the study demonstrated that prospective teachers have high levels of ecocentric values and moderate levels of materialistic values; also, these values have significant relations with some of the variables. The findings indicated there were negative or positive weak correlations between some variables.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of four-year-long undergraduate education on the learning styles of prospective teachers of social studies. This study was conducted in accordance with longitudinal method, which is one of the research designs used in developmental psychology researches. The study was conducted with the participation of 70 prospective teachers of social studies who studied at Ondokuz Mayis University Faculty of Education between 2009 and 2013 and who volunteered to participate in the study. The learning styles of prospective teachers were found by using Kolb's learning styles inventory in the first and last years of their undergraduate education. When the data from this assessment tool were analyzed, it was found that undergraduate education did not cause a significant difference in the perception (concrete experience-abstract conceptualization) and processing (reflective observation-active experimentation) ways in the learning styles of prospective teachers and similar results were found when the variable of gender was taken as the basis.

It has been argued that culture has a significant impact on learning styles. Turkey is one of the non-Western countries according to studies on the classification of countries based on cultural characteristics. Therefore, the primary objective of this study was to compare the learning styles of geography undergraduates in Turkey with the findings of a previous international study in which the learning styles of Western geography undergraduates were assessed. Kolb's Learning Styles Inventory was used as a measurement tool in order to facilitate this comparison, and 1275 Turkish geography undergraduates studying at eight universities in different geographical regions of Turkey responded to this inventory. The data obtained from the study were analyzed to compare the learning styles with those of Western geography undergraduates. According to the research findings, the assimilating and converging learning styles were favored between Turkish geography undergraduates, while the assimilating learning style was favored between Western geography undergraduates. Similar to Western counterparts, there are significant differences between demographic variables such as age and class of and predominant learning styles of Turkish geography undergraduates within 10 departments.