Environmental Mental Models of Primary School Students: Are They Related to Gender and Grade Level?

Abstract

also affected by the environment. Among all living things, the human being is the one that affects the environment the most. Mankind, who lived by gathering, herding and hunting in ancient times, started to cultivate, grow crops and create pastures for animals in later periods (Ponting, 2010). With the adoption of agriculture, the population of human being, who settled down, increased rapidly, and this situation started to create a negative effect on the environment. The artificial environment that people created in order to be able to grow the food and to feed the animals has started to harm natural ecosystems. The agricultural process, which emerged with cultivation and domestication of animals, dating back about 10.000 to 12.000 years, was competed a few thousand years ago and the first cities were established with the discovery of different uses of tools (Türkman, 2000). Until the 16th century, developments in food production and disease control were limited, and in parallel, population growth remained at a certain level. The world population, which was 536 million in the 1650s, increased to over 1.