An Examination of Secondary School Students' Perceptions of the of Earthquake

In this chapter, the authors study the ways in which school children in Türkiye and Poland conceptualize and depict earthquakes in their drawings. Natural disasters are commonplace around the world, and much like the adult population, their impact on children is often the deepest. Media and education are powerful tools; in this case, the analysis focuses on how children from Poland, a country that is not known for earthquakes, still manage to associate and reflect on them. The act of drawing in Polish and Turkish children allowed them to externally synthesize their internal emotions and understanding of a catastrophic event. The objective of the current analysis focuses on the ways in which these drawings demonstrate varying levels of cultural and experiential understanding of earthquakes, from the portrayal of destruction, loss, and the desperate scenes of pleading for help, to the color, imagery, and movement in the picture that is laced with hope. Turkish students and Polish students demonstrated the cognitive and affective trauma of earthquakes in drawings that were starkly different. The Polish students' drawings were indirect and drawn from a knowledge framework, while the Turkish students' drawings were direct and trauma-informed.