Abstract
Primary School Students' Attitudes towards Environment
Environment is a heritage from the past and an entrust for the future. Today environmental problems which continue increasingly have effected our lives. To determine the problems that created by humanbeings and to provide positive attitudes towards environmental protection can be seen as serious steps for problem solving. This study aims to examine the attitudes of primary school students towards environment in terms of gender, whether they live in a house with garden or not; they have pets or not, their schools have environmental clubs or not, if they are participated in the club activities or not, if they participate in the environmental or scout camps or not, whether they plant or not. Using the screening model the sample group consisted of 543 eighth grade students. Environmental Attitude Scale (CTO), developed by Atasoy (2005), is used as the data collection tool. Data were collected during the 2013-2014 spring term. In order to analyze the data t test was used. Results show that girls’ emvironmental attitudes are more positive compared to boys. However there is no significant difference between the scores of boys and girls towards environment in terms of living in a house with garden or not, having a pet or not, having clubs at school or not. Findings also show that students who participate in club activities have more positive attitudes towards environment compared to students who do not participate in. Students’ participation in a scout or environmental camp does not cause a significant difference on environmental attitudes. Besides there is no significant difference between the attitudes of the students who plant and do not plant.
Keywords
Environment, Environmental Attitudes, Primary School students.
