EGU (European Geosciences Union) Field Officer Programme In Türkiye

In our century, considering the increasing environmental problems, natural disasters, the raw materials of indispensable products we use in daily life are obtained from nature and natural destructions are considered, geoscience education is very important for countries. The main purpose of geoscience education is to enable individuals to have knowledge of natural processes and to understand how human activities affect the Earth. One of the most important stages of geoscience education is to ensure the professional development of teachers. For this purpose, EGU (European Geosciences Union) Committee on Education (CoE)  has started the Geoscience Education Field Officer Programme and within the scope of this program, the geoscience workshops held in Türkiye. The aim of the workshops is to provide the professional development of teachers who have geoscience elements in their curriculum with interactive activities.

Workshops that develop critical thinking and creativity and enable participants to learn from their own experiences are planned for two hours. Workshop activities are planned as interactive and hand on group work and consist of easily accessible and simple materials. After the workshops, data is collected with the evaluation form provided by EGU. According to the evaluation form, it is seen that the participants showed a high level of interest in the workshop.

Participating teachers declared that the hands-on activities in the workshop were experiments and activities that could be carried out with easily accessible materials that could attract the attention of students and enable them to learn more effectively by doing / experiencing geosciences. 84 percent of the teachers wanted such workshops to be held more frequently in the future. The collected data confirms that the geocience Education Workshop in Türkiye has a positive impact on the participating teachers. This finding is supported by the teachers' high level of interest in the workshop, expressing the workshop as a useful and enjoyable environment where they learn from their own experiences, and they plan to attend future workshops.