Surveying American and Turkish middle school students' existing knowledge of earthquakes by using a systemic network

Global environmental events are becoming increasingly important, because most of them enter our daily lives and somehow shape our everyday activities. Earthquakes are one of the most important environmental events affecting our life. Despite extensive media coverage, the public's scientific knowledge of earthquakes is limited. The purpose of this study was to design a questionnaire by using a new approach "Systemic Networks" to investigate students' existing knowledge of earthquakes. Systemic networks categorize features systematically in terms of events and their related actions. In the study, systemic networks were constructed around four possible features of earthquakes: (a) what are earthquakes? (b) how do earthquakes happen? (c) how can earthquakes affect other things such as objects or living things? and (d) what can be done to protect from earthquakes?; The questionnaire was administered to 823 students in 5th through 8th grades. Participants included in the sample were chosen from two different locations: Aydin, Turkey, which is in a high-risk Earthquake zone; and Columbus/OH, which is in a low risk Earthquake zone. In addition, the majority of students in the United States have received formal instruction about earthquakes whereas the majority of students in Turkey have not.; Comprehensive Exploratory Factor Analysis (CEFA version 1.03 for MS Windows) was used to examine students' patterns of thinking. Ten factors were found based on the students' common pattern of thinking and all ten factors represented separate themes framed around the features of systemic networks. The research showed similarities as well as differences between the responses in two countries. The US students' scientific knowledge about earthquakes was significantly higher than Turkish students and they held fewer naive beliefs than Turkish students about the definition of earthquakes and about how earthquakes happen. Over half of the students in both countries do not know about earthquake safety. The results of this study found that students who had experienced an earthquake did not have better knowledge about them. The success of this study also suggests that the network design of the questionnaire might have broader application to different subject matter and concepts.