The Ministry of National Education introduced a "disaster awareness" course, which is included in the elective courses in the curriculum for middle schools.
The curriculum of the "disaster awareness" course prepared for fifth, sixth and seventh grades by the General Directorate of Basic Education was approved by the Board of Education and Discipline.
The course includes a curriculum of 72 hours at each level of middle school and is included within the scope of elective courses.
In the disaster awareness course, students are expected to use life skills in disasters, have knowledge about first aid and its importance, learn about the effects of disasters in Türkiye, understand the damage that disasters cause to the individual, society and economy, and use their ability to effectively predict the possible consequences of disasters.
In line with the Turkish Qualifications Framework, the course also included topics for acquiring skills such as "environmental literacy," "media literacy," "map literacy," "location analysis," "perception of change and continuity" and "perception of space."
In this course, students will first study the first level (disaster awareness 1) and then the second level (disaster awareness 2).
During the course, students will be given the opportunity to research topics related to the field and make presentations on them. Activities such as drama, games, trips, observations and drills will be included in the lessons.
It is planned to support the disaster awareness course with visual materials as much as possible and include examples encountered in daily life during the course.
During the implementation phase of the courses, the focus will be on disaster risks, taking into account the regions where students live, and students will be enabled to take an active role in the learning process.
The first level curriculum of the course will include "nature and human interaction" and "types of natural disasters," and the second level curriculum will include the units "types of nature-related disasters" and "types of human-caused disasters."
In the "nature and human interaction" unit, students will learn about the concepts of risk, danger and disaster, as well as the classification of nature and human-caused events that may cause disasters, and students will also be able to make inferences about the role of humans in turning nature-related events into disaster risks.
The unit, which emphasizes the importance of being aware of disasters in disaster and emergency management, will include topics such as the primary objectives of first aid and the work of national and international organizations that are actors in disaster and emergency risk management.
In the "Types of natural disasters" unit, students will analyze the reasons why an earthquake event turns into a disaster, learn the precautions to be taken before, during and after the earthquake and learn about what to do under the rubble when exposed to an earthquake disaster.
In the unit, which also includes the reasons why floods and overflow events turn into disasters, students will be able to learn what to do during floods and overflows by making inferences about the precautions to be taken against the danger of floods and overflows, and will learn about the places with high risk of floods and overflows in the country.
In the "types of natural disasters" unit, which is also included in the second level "disaster awareness 2" course, topics such as the reasons why an avalanche event turns into a disaster, places with high avalanche risk in the country, precautions to be taken against avalanche danger and points to be taken into consideration after an avalanche will be discussed.
The reasons why storms turn into disasters and the danger of drought, the analysis of the economic, environmental and social effects of drought in Türkiye, the causes of erosion danger and basic concepts related to epidemic diseases will also be examined under this unit.
In the "types of human-caused disasters" unit in the second-level curriculum, students will be expected to make inferences about the causes of human-caused disasters.
The unit, which includes topics such as the reasons why fire turns into a disaster, disasters resulting from accidents in transportation systems and the evaluation of the damage caused by industrial accidents with their environmental, social and economic dimensions, will also have a section on precautions to be taken in case of nuclear, biological and chemical accident danger.
While importance is given to student interaction throughout the units, emphasis will be placed on the use of interactive boards and visual materials for the active participation of the students.
