Secondary School Students' Awareness of Environmental Education Concepts

Abstract

Humans have been living in an environment since its existence. Human approaches and attitudes towards the
environment in which they live have changed over time. It is hoped the negative attitudes of humans towards nature,
the environment and environmental problems will change in a positive way, due to increasing levels of awareness
occurr ing through environmental education. The aim of this study is to measure secondary school students' level of
awareness about environmental education concepts. A quantitative survey model is used in this study. The sample of
the study was taken at several c entral secondary schools in the Sivas province for students in Grades 5 8. There is a
total of 524 students in the study. The “Environmental education concepts awareness scale ( EECAS )”, consists of 22
items and is a data collection tool for this study. T he IBM SPSS statistical 23 package program was used to analyze the
data. The results were analyzed by means of arithmetic mean, standard deviation, Mann Whitney U test and Kruskal
Wallis test. The data was evaluated with a significance level of 0.05. As a result of the research, it was concluded that
secondary school students who participated in th is research had a high level of awareness about the concepts of
environmental education overall. On the other hand, it was concluded that there was no significant difference in
secondary school students‘ awareness of environmental education concepts compared to gender and family speech
status variables on environmental issues. İt was observed that there was a significant difference between variables
such as class, mothers’ education, fathers’ education and family monthly income levels.