New Perspectives in Science Education

Environmental education represents an important component of education aimed at fostering a responsible relationship with the environment, gaining particular significance already in early childhood, when basic attitudes and value orientations are formed. The presented paper focuses on the environmental awareness and environmental attitudes of preschool children and highlights their importance as an analytical starting point for evaluating the impact of environmental education in different educational settings. The research was designed as a quantitative descriptive study with a screening design, methodologically based on the study by Biber et al. (2023) [1]. The research sample consisted of 154 children aged 4 to 6 years attending public kindergartens and forest clubs. Data collection was conducted in two public kindergartens and seven forest clubs in March 2025 using a picture-based scale aimed at assessing environmental awareness and environmental attitudes. The applied instrument was a localized and methodologically adapted version of the scale developed by Büyüktaşkapu Soydan and Öztürk Samur (2017) [2]. Children evaluated selected environmental situations using a three-point colour scale. Due to the non-normal distribution of the data, the Mann–Whitney U test was used to compare groups. The results suggest that preschool children are able to distinguish between environmentally friendly and environmentally unfriendly situations and to adopt an evaluative stance towards them through simple symbolic tools. No statistically significant differences were found between the examined groups and institutions, with sibling status emerging as the only more influential factor in the context of forest clubs. The findings provide a basis for further research focused on comparing different educational approaches to environmental education in early childhood education.