**The Role of Environmental Education of New Curriculum in North Cyprus** The Role of Environmental Education of New

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.71561

Serife Gündüz and Mirati Erdoğuş

Curriculum in North Cyprus

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Serife Gündüz and Mirati Erdoğuş

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.71561 Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

#### Abstract

Environmental education is extremely important when it comes to protecting the environment and consequently life on Earth. Agenda 21, which is a big international agreement, has called for a "re-orientation" of all education toward sustainability. From this point of view, a project was launched in June 2015 with the purpose of developing new curricula in North Cyprus on environmental education. Through the development of innovative and technology-enhanced curriculum materials, the project aimed to empower awareness of Turkish Cypriot and teachers and students on issues pertaining to the environmental problems in North Cyprus. In the context of the project, curriculum materials were prepared and workshops were offered to teachers. By using a combination of face-to-face and online strategies, educators collaborated on developing and implementing projects and activities on environment and technology. Collaborating teachers provided an opportunity to work in teams to identify specific thematic units in the areas of environment that are critical for Turkish Cypriots and which will serve as the focus of the professional development program. During this project, five new curricula were prepared about environmental education and discussed with teachers.

Keywords: environmental education, North Cyprus, Turkish Cypriot, curriculum, ecology

### 1. Introduction

Environmental education is defined as the process that provides the development of environmental awareness in all sections of the society. This is mainly managed by raising individuals who are interested in environmental issues and making them actively participate in environmental activities as well as take responsibility on the protection of natural, historical and cultural values.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and eproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

In the Turkish Cypriot community, environmental education in the curriculum fails to cover all the environmental issues sufficiently. For this reason, there is a need to a curriculum that would include all possible educational cases based on environment. However, there are some priorities that must be considered firstly which are declare in some conferences and tried to be taken into consideration by the government and municipalities because of the deteriorated situation. These major environmental trends and needs can be briefly mentioned as the waste management (recycling, reduce, reuse, compost), conservation of biodiversity (especially endemics) and ecosystems, rehabilitation of the Cyprus Mining Corporation (CMC), maintaining and, if possible, increasing the water quality and quantity, and lastly protecting the lands having environmental and agricultural importance.

The Ministry of Education has been replacing textbooks since the year 2004, and in this context, new units on environment have been added to textbooks. However, due to the fact that these new units were not sufficient, the preparation of the book "Environment and Mankind" for the ninth grades had become an issue and the book was prepared by a committee of six people and with the help of the Biologists Association. The textbook "Environment and Health" for the ninth grades were prepared both in the form of teacher's book and in the form of student's book and it will be included in the curriculum in February. The book "Environment and Mankind" includes units on healthy life and diseases, first aid methods, harmful addictions, sexuality and family, ecosystems, biological diversity, pollution and sustainable earth. Especially within the unit on environment, the biological diversity in Cyprus, the important ecological areas in Cyprus, general environmental problems in Cyprus and their possible solutions, the environmental responsibilities of Cyprus in the sustainable earth and both regional and international dimensions of alternative energy are explained thoroughly. Cyprus is the only island located between the three continents, namely Europe, Asia and Africa. The Cyprus Island with its pine, cypress and cedar shrouded mountains had been very rich in its natural resources, which inspired people to called it "The Green Island of the Mediterranean Sea." Today, remains of the true Mediterranean forest in Cyprus, mainly as a result of man's influence over many centuries, systematically cultivating and modifying much of the land, causing its degradation to maquis and garrigue, planting different vegetation types, creating habitations, terracing, groves and orchards. And so, now it is not possible to

The Role of Environmental Education of New Curriculum in North Cyprus

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The climate has favored the evolution of a correspondingly individual and extremely variable flora, largely dominated by evergreen trees and shrubs, often with tough leathery, dull green leaves. The richness of the flora can partly be explained by the uniqueness of the Mediterranean climate, favoring a great regional variation in certain groups of plants. Forest areas, plus the maquis areas, specific to the Mediterranean, are namely the backbone of any terrestrial ecosystem. The high maquis in Cyprus (grows as high as 4–5 m) includes the strawberry tree (Arbutus andrachne), oaks, junipers, Judas tree, olives, Aleppo pines, myrtle and fig tree. The low maquis (grows 1.5–2 m high) includes lentisk, rosemary, sage, Cistus salviifolius, Cistus creticus, Cistus parviflorus and so on. The Cistus maquis is a common characteristic of the low maquis of the island, and they are dominating large areas. In addition, Cyprus, being an island and thus isolated from the mainland, is rich in endemics, with a large number of variable species typical of the region. There are about 109 endemic plants in Cyprus in which 19 are

endemic to North Cyprus which occur here and nowhere else in the world.

call it with same name.

The North Cyprus endemics:

5. Hedysarum cyprium Boiss.

6. Rosularia cypria (Holmboe) Meikle

4. Dianthus cyprius A. K. Jackson et Turrill

1. Brassica hilarionis Post 2. Arabis cypria Holmboe 3. Silene fraudatrix Meikle

Besides the increase in environmental problems, for the time being in Cyprus, there is only one subject in primary schools about environment "Environment and Traffic" and only traffic is being taught to the students in class. It is, therefore, clear that the lack of the environmental education in primary schools makes it more difficult to find a solution to the environmental problems, which approximately are caused by the negative and unconscious effects of human beings.

This research aims to provide information about environmental education in primary schools in North Cyprus and to help to develop an environmental education curriculum.
