Abstract:
Problem Statement: Today’s arising environmental and global challenges
that are originated from mainly human activities (e.g. rapidly increasing
world population together with a similarly fast-growing consumption,
raw material, energy shortage, and the failure in the balanced distribution
of resources, lack of fresh water supplies and various other social
problems) are a chain of problems that disrupt the homeostasis in the
ecosystem. Specifically the effect over natural habitats is striking.
Although the population of Cyprus is not high and the industry is not
highly developed, it still faces environmental problems every day. Since
human is the most important factor of the pollution, the insemination of
the importance of ecology knowledge and sensitivity into young minds is
essential to protect the environment for the next generations. Thus, here
we state our research problem as; “what are the attitudes and behaviors of
high school students to the environment in a developing country”.
The Purpose of the Study: In this study, we aimed to identify the knowledge
and behaviors of Central-Famagusta high school pupils towards the
environment. We also examined the awareness of students towards the
environment according to their age, gender as well as the income and the
education levels of their families.
Method: We conducted a questionnaire and the Environmental Attitude
Scale on 574 high school pupils from two different high school grades.
Statistical analyses were done by SPSS 17 statistics program. The
frequency (f), means and T test and ANOVA were used to analyze the data.
Findings and Results: We found that (1) environmental awareness is not
affected by the income level of the family (2) participation into
environment-related activities with teachers and friends at school has a positive effect on students (3) students who participate into environmental
activities gain the capacity to transform environmental ideas to behavior
and at the same time acquire the conscious of warning others that are
damaging the environment.
Conclusions and Recommendations:
Our study aims to understand the environmental awareness and behavior
of high school students of different age and gender groups that come from
different backgrounds. We found that the most effective way of teaching
the importance of environmental and ecological problems to younger
minds is to provide them environment-related activities where they can
take active roles and hands-on experiences. This should be done in
collaboration by pedagogues and teachers starting at the first step of the
education system.
