The rapid industrial expansion of the 21st century has fostered “sacrifice zones”: areas where ecological integrity is compromised for economic growth, and pollution risks are disproportionately borne by local communities (Lerner, 2010). The Ergene Basin in northwestern Turkey, a textile and chemical industry hub, represents a striking example. While the region is notorious for Class IV water pollution (Tokatlı, 2020), industrial emissions and factory chimneys constitute a visible, everyday reality for residents, particularly in urban centers like Çorlu.

Situated within this context, this study explores how middle school students in this high-risk environment perceive and represent environmental problems through drawings and narratives. Rather than simple illustrations, drawings are conceptualized as meaningful indicators of how children cognitively and symbolically construct environmental issues (Kozma, 2003). The objective is to identify how living in a “sacrifice zone” shapes children’s environmental mental models and to contribute to a localized framework for environmental education.

The central research questions are:

1. How do students in an industrial “sacrifice zone” represent environmental problems, and what do these reveal about their cognitive and affective mental models?
2. How do students’ direct place-based encounters with industrial pollution shape their mental models of global environmental phenomena, such as climate change and the greenhouse effect?

The study is grounded in Mental Models Theory (MMT), the Draw-An-Environment Test (DAET) methodology, and Place-Based Education (PBE). MMT provides a foundation for interpreting drawings as externalizations of internal cognitive structures, allowing insight into how learners organize complex environmental phenomena experienced through sensory exposure (Johnson-Laird, 1983; Greca & Moreira, 2000). The DAET-R (Rubric) serves as the primary analytical framework to elicit dimensions of environmental mental models, including concern, responsibility, and agency (Moseley et al., 2010). Analyzing drawings alongside written narratives supports a grounded interpretation of symbolic choices. This triangulation reduces researcher bias and increases analytical validity (Strauss 1987; Patton 2002). Finally, PBE emphasizes that environmental literacy is most effective when rooted in learners’ immediate surroundings (Sobel, 2004). In the Ergene Basin, students’ representations are inevitably shaped by direct encounters with degradation, enabling connections between local experience and broader ecological transitions.

Although situated in Turkey, the study addresses shared European challenges related to the ecological transition of industrial heartlands. Pollution in the Ergene Basin is a transboundary issue; it carries industrial waste into the North Aegean Sea via the Maritsa (Meriç) River, affecting waters shared with Greece and Bulgaria. This connects the study directly to the European Green Deal’s ‘Zero Pollution’ ambition (European Commission, 2021). Understanding how children in this shared basin perceive such risks is crucial for Europe’s collective ecological transition. Furthermore, while European research underscores how school-based policies and contact with nature shape student outcomes (Boeve-de Pauw & Van Petegem, 2018), this research explores the inverse: how intense industrial degradation in 'sacrifice zones' influences the formation of environmental mental models. This comparative perspective contributes to a broader European understanding of how industrial landscapes shape children’s environmental understanding.

The study adopts a qualitative case study design to enable an in-depth, context-sensitive exploration of students’ environmental perceptions within a specific socio-ecological setting (Yin, 2018). This approach is particularly suitable for examining how environmental meanings are constructed in regions characterized by long-term industrial pollution. Purposeful sampling was used to select 11 seventh-grade students (n=11) from the Ergene Basin (Çorlu), an industrial “sacrifice zone” where ecological integrity is systematically compromised by textile and chemical production (Lerner, 2010; Tokatlı, 2020). Prolonged exposure to these conditions is expected to shape students’ internal cognitive and emotional structures, conceptualized here as environmental mental models. Ethical approval was obtained, and informed consent was secured from participants and parents. The primary instrument was the Draw-An-Environment Test (DAET), a child-centered method that enables participants to externalize mental models difficult to articulate verbally (Moseley et al., 2010). Students were prompted: “Draw the environmental problems in your surroundings and explain your drawing in writing on the back.” A combined visual–narrative approach has been widely used in environmental perception research, where children’s drawings are analysed alongside verbal or written explanations to uncover their conceptual and affective understandings of environmental issues (Barraza, 1999; Alaçam, 2025). Such approaches enable researchers to interpret symbolic choices in drawings in conjunction with participants’ own narratives, strengthening depth and credibility of qualitative interpretation (Strauss, 1987; Patton, 2002). Data analysis followed a two-stage qualitative procedure. First, interpretive thematic analysis identified recurring visual symbols (e.g., factory chimneys, polluted rivers), grouped into meta-themes. Second, the DAET-R (Rubric) assessed the structural complexity of representations across four dimensions: human, biotic, abiotic, and artificial environments. Each was scored on a 0–3 scale based on the level of interaction depicted, evaluating students’ systems thinking (Moseley et al., 2010). To ensure methodological rigor, the study followed Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) trustworthiness criteria. Credibility was established through data triangulation and peer debriefing. Transferability was supported via thick description of the industrial context. Dependability and confirmability were ensured through an audit trail and inter-coder reliability checks, with a second researcher independently coding a subset of data.

The findings reveal that students in the Ergene Basin appear to hold predominantly catastrophic mental models, characterized by risk-dominated and loss-oriented representations rather than solution-oriented imaginaries. Air pollution emerged as the most oppressive theme, with drawings saturated by factory chimneys emitting dense smoke, frequently labeled as CO₂. The widespread use of dark, monochromatic color palettes signals underlying environmental anxiety and functions as a visual counter-narrative to the “reassurance discourse” often promoted by industrial institutions (Malchiodi, 1998; Phillimore, 1998). Using the DAET-R as an analytical scaffold to interpret the structural complexity of students’ mental models, the study found that students’ representations were dominated by artificial and abiotic dimensions in strong interaction with human behaviors, while biotic elements remained marginalized. Higher-level representations (scores 2–3) demonstrated causal reasoning, whereas lower-level drawings relied on isolated depictions. The recurring “black river” motif, often accompanied by dead fish, suggests that industrial pollution has become an internalized ecological reality for these children. Notably, responsibility was not attributed solely to industry. Students emphasized everyday behaviors such as littering cigarette butts or chewing gum, linking these to harm inflicted on wildlife. This indicates a critical awareness of social responsibility alongside structural critique. Furthermore, several drawings displayed spatial bridging, connecting local pollution to global consequences like melting polar ice. Although some links reflect conceptual inaccuracies, such as associating deodorant use with the greenhouse effect, they reveal strong biocentric empathy and attempts to reason across ecological scales. Overall, these findings underscore the need for restorative, place-based environmental education (Sobel, 2004) that balances risk awareness with ecological agency and action-oriented hope (Ojala, 2012). Such an approach offers an important contribution to environmental justice-oriented pedagogy for industrial heartlands across Europe, informing context-sensitive climate interventions in regions facing similar ecological transitions.

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