Energy Education Science and Technology Part B: Social and Educational Studies 2011 Volume (issue) 3(3): 343-358
Evaluation of primary school students’ thought about and behaviors and attitudes towards environment Ozgul Keles* Aksaray University, Faculty of Education, 68100 Merkez-Aksaray, Turkey
Received 17 June 2010; accepted 22 July 2010
Abstract The purpose of the present study is to investigate whether the 6th, 7th and 8th grade students’ thoughts about and behaviors and attitudes towards environment vary depending on the variables of gender, grade level and their parents’ education status. There are totally 534 students (320 females and 214 males) participating in the study. “Environmental Attitude Scale” was used to evaluate the students’ attitudes towards environment. In the analyses of the data, MANOVA and Pearson correlation were used. It was found that means of the scores obtained for thoughts about and attitudes towards environment vary significantly depending on the gender variable, yet, no significant difference was found for the means of the scores obtained for behaviors towards environment. A significant difference was found among the means of the scores obtained for thoughts about and behaviors and attitudes towards environment based on the grade level variable. The scores for thoughts about and behaviors and attitudes towards environment change depending on the education status of the parents. The potential impacts of the findings of the present for environment education study will be discussed. Keywords: Environmental education; Environmental thought; Environmental attitude; Primary school
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1. Introduction The extent to which living style based on consumption economy destroys the nature, sustainable life, global environmental problems, and the role of education in sorting out these problems are among the topics on which academicians, reporters and statement and accordingly many researchers have put great emphasis in the last quarter [1-3]. During the period from the United Nations Environment Conference held in 1972 to World Sustainable _____________ *
Corresponding author: Tel.: +90-505-299-0879; Fax: +90-382-289-1180. E-mail address:
[email protected] (O. Keles).
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Development Conference held in 2002, countries in the world carried out some activities to protect the earth to survive. They approved Millennium Development Objectives and stipulated that they would make the education more widespread, protect the rights of women and children, and environment [4]. It seems to not possible to solve the environmental problems only through technology and laws, but by changing the individuals’ behavioral patterns as a result of improving their knowledge and value systems. In order to change the behaviors, it is necessary to change attitudes, opinions and value judgments [5-9]. Environmental education is process of clarifying thoughts and approving values to develop important attitudes and skills for people to understand and appreciate the relations between the culture and bio-physical environment [10]. The environmental education of the 21st century should not only aim to improve knowledge about and awareness of environment. This education should profoundly change people’s attitudes towards life and environment, and contribute to the creation of individuals who show their reactions to environmental problems, make suggestions to solve these problems, participate actively, think, discuss, question, understand what sustainable life, and development mean and are in harmony with the world [11]. Environmental education has some affective and cognitive objectives. Cognitive objectives strive for making people environmentally literate, and affective objectives create values and attitudes towards environment and environmental problems [12]. Positive attitudes towards environment include individuals’ positive opinions, feelings about and behaviors for the protection of environment and its function in the lives of the living creatures. What is needed for such attitudes to develop is experience including positive examples, appropriate models and information [13]. According to Ekici [14], as in every part of life, environmental education is one of the most important elements for raising people’s consciousness and protecting the natural resources of a country. Students’ learning new information about environment will result in positive changes in their environmental values and attitudes. Moreover, information gained through affective experiences and individual activities will have some contributions to the formation of environmentally-friendly behaviors. Concretizing the environmentally-friendly behaviors will change a child’s environmental values and attitudes, and with the increasing level of knowledge, the opinions about environment will change, and the raising environmental awareness will shape the environmental values and attitudes. Environmental values and attitudes will help to describe environmental phenomena; hence, an affective environmental education should include teaching of information, attitudes and behaviors [15]. In our country, when the primary school programs are examined, it is seen that there is no environmental education course either being required or elective, and expected gains of environmental education are given within Life Sciences, Social Studies and Science and Technology courses in combination with the particular gains of these courses. The vision of Science and Technology teaching program which includes the highest number of environment-related gains is “to educate Science and Technology literate individuals regardless of their individual differences.” One of the characteristics that should be possessed by Science and Technology literate individuals is expressed as “understanding the interactions among science, technology, society and environment.” In the program, science and technology literacy is divided into seven dimensions. Fifth of these is “Science-TechnologySociety-Environment Relations (STSE).” Learning field in which science-technology-societyenvironment relations are found is not dealt with as a separate unit but because some of the
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gains in these fields are life-long experiences and related to the all of the content of science and technology, it is presented in an integrated way with the other four fields [16]. Environmental education given at schools has an important role in the education of environmentally sensitive generations and having a sustainable future [17]. Giving direction to environmental education with their research, researchers mostly attempt to explain the relations between environmental knowledge, attitude and behavior [5, 18, 19] and state that responsible environmental behaviors are the proofs of effective environmental education [2024]. As stated by Aydin [25], attitudes consist of feelings, opinions and behaviors and these dimensions interact with each other. Therefore, literature puts great emphasis on the relations between the attitude and these dimensions. Though there is a vague relation between environmental knowledge and environmental attitude, there are some studies reporting that positive attitudes towards environment are connected with responsible behaviors towards environment [26-32]. There are various studies carried out about one of the dimensions of environmental attitude, environmental thought [3335]. Variables such as gender, socio-economic status and age function as the sources of change in the attitudes towards environment [36, 37]. When the related literature is reviewed, some studies investigating the relations between the attitudes towards environment and these variables can be seen. There are many studies investigating the relations between attitude and gender [5, 11, 34, 35, 38-40]; attitude and age [34, 37, 41-43]; attitude and socio-economic status [34, 43-46]; attitude and grade level [7, 47, 48] and attitude and parents’ educational status [7, 48]. Education starting from the primary school has an important role in imparting environmental thought, attitude and responsible behavior to children, and transforming love for nature and sense of environmental protection into permanent behaviors and life style. Equipping students from every stage of schooling and particularly primary school with environmental consciousness is directly connected to the importance attached to environmental education, instilling required information, skills and sensitivities in children. For students to gain positive environmental thoughts, attitudes and behaviors, first, the factors affecting thoughts, attitudes and behaviors should be determined. When all the factors are determined, students’ environmental awareness can be raised and they can be encouraged to have active roles in the solution of environmental problems. Hence, the present study aims to determine the factors affecting primary school students’ environmental thoughts, attitudes and behaviors. The main purpose of the study is to determine whether the environmental thoughts, attitudes and behaviors of the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders vary depending on three variables which are gender, grade level and parents’ educational status. In this respect, answers are sought for the following questions. a. What are the environmental thought, attitude and behavior scores of the students? b. Do the students’ environmental thought, attitude and behavior scores vary depending on gender? c. Do the students’ environmental thought, attitude and behavior scores vary depending on grade level? d. Do the students’ environmental thought, attitude and behavior scores vary depending on parents’ educational status? e. Are there significant relations among the students’ environmental thought, behavior and attitude scores?
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2. Methodology In this section, model of the study, study group, data collection tools and data analysis will be explained. 2. 1. Model of the study This is a descriptive study. Descriptive studies try to explain the relations among situations, and describe what events, objects, entities, institutions, groups and various fields are by considering their relations with the former events and conditions [49]. 2. 2. Study group The study group of the study consists of totally 549 6th, 7th, and 8th graders attending 11 school selected randomly among 94 primary school in Aksaray city in 2008-2009 school year. 58.3% (320) of the participants are female and 39% (214) are males. 2.7% of the students were coded for this variable. 37.5% (206) of the students are 6th graders, 26.4% (145) are 7th graders and 36.1% (198) are 8th graders. In the selecting of the sampling, disproportional element sampling was used. Disproportional element sampling is a type of sampling where all the elements in the universe have the equal change of being selected for the sampling. In disproportional element sampling, how many elements from each element type present in the universe will enter the sampling is completely a matter of chance. 2. 3. Data collection tools In the present study, “Environmental Attitude Scale” was employed to collect data. The scale developed by Uzun and Saglam [30] include 27 items which are organized in the form of five-point Likert type ranging from “Completely agree/always: 5” to “Strongly disagree / never: 1”. This scale has two sub-scales which are “Environmental Thought” and “Environmental Behavior”. The lowest score that can be obtained from the 14-item Environmental Thought sub-scale is 14 and the highest score is 70 and the lowest score that can be obtained from the 13-item Environmental Behavior sub-scale is 13 and the highest score is 65. For the construct validity of the Environmental Attitude Scale, factor analysis was carried out. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) coefficient for the Environmental Thought sub-scale was found to be 0.936, and it was found to be 0.899 for the Environmental Behavior sub-scale. Barlett Sphericity test was found to be significant for both of the sub-scales. Both of the subscales were found to be bi-factor and total variance explained by these two factors was found to be 61.578% for the Environmental Thought sub-scale, and 51.091% for the Environmental Behavior sub-scale. Moreover, it was found that the common variance of the two factors defined in relation to the Environmental Thought sub-scale ranges from 0.471 to 0.747 and common variance of the two factors defined in relation to the Environmental Behavior subscale ranges from 0.392 to 0.664. For the reliability analysis of the scale, Cronbach alfa and Spearman Brown split-half correlations were calculated. Cronbach alfa coefficient of the Environmental Thought subscale was found to be α=0.89, and Spearman Brown split-half correlation was found to be 0.82. Cronbach alfa coefficient of the Environmental Behavior sub-scale was found to be α=0.87, and Spearman Brown two half tests coefficient was found to be 0.78. For the whole
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Environmental Attitude Scale, Cronbach alfa coefficient was found to be 0.82, and Spearman Brown split-half correlation was found to be 0.80. These findings concerning the reliability and validity of the scale are in compliance with the findings of the original study. 2. 4. Data analysis In the present study, the relations among the students’ environmental thought, behavior and attitude scores were evaluated through descriptive statistics test. Whether the dependent variables; that is, educational thought, attitude, and behavior vary depending on the independent variables; gender, grade level and educational status of parents, was tested by means of MANOVA. The existence of relations between the dependent variables was tested through Pearson correlation analysis. MANOVA is used to test whether a significant difference is revealed by the groups constructed according to one or more factors in relation to two or more dependent variables. It is a kind of technique used to test whether there is a significant difference among the groups’ mean scores obtained from the combination of the dependent variables. Wilks Lambda and F statistics are frequently used to compare the mean scores of the groups [50]. 3. Findings and discussions In this section, whether the students’ environmental thoughts, attitudes and behaviors vary depending on gender, grade level and parents’ educational status variables is tested and the results of the analyses are interpreted and presented in connection with the sub-problems. 3. 1. What are the environmental thought, attitude and behavior scores of the students? Environmental thought score mean of the students was calculated to be X=52.82. This mean value shows that the students have “high” environmental thought scores (14.00-32.66: Low, 32.67-51.33: Medium and 51.34-70.00: High). Environmental behavior score mean of the students was calculated to be X=45.37. This value indicates that the students display “medium” level of positive behaviors (13.00-30.33: Low, 30.34-47.66: Medium and 47.6765.00: High). Environmental attitude mean score of the students was calculated to be X= 98.58: This value shows that the students have a “medium” level of positive attitude (27-63: Low, 64-99: Medium and 100-135: High).
Table 1: Descriptive statistics concerning the students’ environmental though, behavior and attitude scores Skewness
Kurtosis
Statistics S.Error
Statistics S.Error
Scale N Environmental Thought Scores Environmental Behavior Scores Environmental Attitude Scores
X
SS
Variance
Min.
Max.
584 52.82 13.032 169.847
24.00 70.00
-0.542
0.101
-0.964
0.202
607 45.37 10.049 100.999
13.00 65.00
-0.471
0.099
0.291
0.198
549 98.58 15.292 233.870
51.00 130,00 -0.090
0.104
-0.739
0.208
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10.049 and 15.292, respectively. According to skewness, data belonging to all the three score types exhibit normal distribution (Skewness = -0.542, -0.471 and -0.090, respectively) (Table 1). 3. 2. Do the students’ environmental thought, attitude and behavior scores vary depending on gender? As can be seen in Table 2, while the female students’ environmental thought ( X=55.79) and attitude scores ( X=101.21) are higher than those of the male students ( X=49.16 and X=95.09, respectively), the male students’ environmental behavior scores ( X=45.92) are higher than those of the female students ( X=45.41). Table 2. Descriptive statistics for the students’ scores in relation to gender Dependent Variable Environmental Thought Score
Environmental Behavior Score
Environmental Attitude Score
Gender Females Males Total Females Males Total Females Males Total
N 320 214 534 320 214 534 320 214 534
Mean 55.79 49.16 53.14 45.41 45.92 45.62 101.21 95.09 98.76
Std. Deviation 11.483 14.131 13.011 10.006 10.103 10.039 14.650 15.568 15.307
Whether the differences in the mean scores found as a result of the evaluation carried out in relation to gender are statistically significant or not was tested with multivariate analysis of variance and one of the means was found to be significantly differentiating (Wilks' Lambda (�)=0.937, F=17.709; p0.05). 3. 5. Are there significant relations among the students’ environmental thought, behavior and attitude scores? As can be seen in table 13, there is negative and low relationship between environmental thought and environmental behavior (r = -0.140; p < 0.01). On the other hand, there is a positive and strong relationship between environmental thought and environmental attitude (r = 0.757; p < 0.001). In addition, there is a positive and medium level of relationship between environmental behavior and environmental attitude (r =0.541; p
