Abstract

The purpose of this research is to define and explain how high school students in Turkey perceive the concept of “erosion” by using phenomenographic research methods. The research group of the study is comprised of 450 high school students studying in 9^th to 12^th grades. In this research, there are some expressions gathered from students, such as “According to me, erosion means…” and “I think erosion means…” statements. After phenomenographic analysis, six different earthquake definition categories were determined. 14.2% of the high school students who contributed to the research defined erosion as a “natural disaster”, 26% defined it as “erosion is loss of soil by external forces”, 50.6% defined it as “erosion is landslide of soil”, 4.7% defined it as “erosion is damage of soil”, 2.6% defined it as “erosion is damage of nature by humans”, and 1.9% said “I do not know what erosion is”.

Key words: Erosion, high schools, geography education, phenomenography.