A study on developing a general attitude scale about environmental issues for students in different grade levels

Humans continue to engage environmental damage behaviors at the individual, corporate, governmental and societal levels. These behaviors contributed to the creation of several environmental problems, which may expose serious threats to the health of humans and all living species (Gore, 1993). While it is thought that the main source of many environmental problems is irresponsible behaviors of people on the environment, it is important that humans have awareness of environmental problems. This is a fact that human beings need to raise awareness of environmental problems as a result of necessary trainings.

Educational endeavours increasingly began to be seen as a means for increasing humans’ environmental knowledge, and in turn, effecting change and addressing environmental problems (Stapp, 1969; Ramsey & Rickson, 1976). Environmental education is crucially needed to prepare students who would play an active role in protecting the environment through making informed decisions and taking environmental friendly behavior (UNESCO–UNEP, 1991). One of the objectives of environmental education was working towards the resolution of environmental problems. Furthermore, environmental education should provide individuals and social groups with an opportunity to be actively involved at all levels (Stapp, 1969; Roth, 1970; UNESCO, 1980; Roth, 1992). The goal of environmental education is to challenge and require setting objectives at the cognitive, metacognitive, affective and behavioral levels (Sanera 1998). An additional goal is to make all people more sensitive about environment and environmental protection by helping them to develop positive attitudes, emotions, thoughts or behaviors about the environment (Şimşekli, 2001; Erten at al., 2003; Özmen et al., 2005; Erol & Gezer, 2006).

Researchers put forward that environmental education, given in both a formal and informal system of education, helps to protect and conserve the environment and enables people to lead quality lives. In an informal system of education, teaching environmental education depends on not only on the curriculum, but also on the quality of teachers in terms of knowledge, awareness, attitude and skills relating to environmental education (Larijani & Yeshodhara, 2008). Therefore, an ultimate goal of this process is to effect students’ decisions and behaviors (Makki, Abd-El-Khalick & Boujaoude, 2003). In a formal system of education, one aim of environmental education is that students gain environmental consciousness (Ozmen & Karamustafaoglu, 2006). For this reason, during the past decade, researchers have considered the nature of environmental education that takes place in schools, colleges and universities (Iozi 1989, Palmberg & Kuru 2000, Shin 2000).

Environmental education is about to receive a major boost in primary, secondary schools and universities. During the last decade, Turkey's national curriculum was amended to include science and technology in primary education after 2005 (MNE, 2005). The formal science education curriculum for grades 4–8 prepared by the Ministry of National Education and includes five main topics such as the world and universe, matter and energy, living organisms and natural resources (MNE 2006). Concepts related to environmental issues are mainly taught when the topic of living organisms is considered. Most curriculums worldwide try to explain knowledge about environmental issues (NRC, 1996; MNE, 2005; 2006). For example, water pollution, the dirtying of sea and rivers by chemical and nuclear wastes; air pollution, the dirtying of the air through toxic gas from factory chimneys, automobiles and the carbon dioxide from the consumed fossil fuels; soil pollution, the dirtying of soil resulting from the rubbish, acid rains, fertilizing and applying disinfectant; the extinction of animals and the plants by human kind; the perforation of ozone layer; the harmful sun rays for human beings; and global warming and climate change (Erten et al., 2003; Kızılaslan & Kızılaslan, 2005; Ozmen & Karamustafaoglu, 2006).

These environmental issues are presented in many grades in an effort to increase students’ understanding (NSES, 1996; MEB, 2004; 2005; 2006; Yılmaz, Boone & Andersen, 2004). Furthermore, students were taught about these concepts related to environmental issues in primary school, high school and university. Students at different levels learned about environmental issues in schools. Not only is education about environmental issues are not enough, but students must also be aware of environmental issues, which should give them a more positive attitude.

In psychology, it is believed that an individual’s personal evaluations are more revealing of the person’s attitude than what he or she claims to do (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993). Therefore, attitudes can be defined as favorable or unfavorable feelings toward a characteristic of the physical environment or toward a related problem (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). Besides, attitudes are commonly believed to be important to marketing because of an assumed causal link between attitudes, intentions and behavior (Hini, Gendall & Kearns, 1995). Furthermore, Loudon & Della Bitta (1993) state that attitudes have been directly related to behavioral change. "Behavioral change is a function of change in behavioral intentions...Changes in behavioral intentions are related to changes in attitudes" (p.422), therefore, the study of attitudes shows that people make evaluative judgments about a wide variety of targets and rely on these judgments, or attitudes, in deciding among several possible courses of action in the future (Crawley & Koballa, 1994). As it is understood from the definition, changes in students’ behavior depend on changes in students’ attitudes. Attitude scales are developed and used to determinate students’ attitudes. It can be seen that many attitude scales have been developed in a variety of fields. One of these fields is environmental education.

When the literature is reviewed, it is possible to find many studies carried out on the environment, environmental education and environmental problems. These studies are generally related to students’ attitudes towards the environment and the status of environmental education at the elementary, secondary and university level. As well as many of these it can be also encountered in studies related to environmental attitude scale. Some researchers such as Leeming, Bracken & Dwyer (1995), Smith-Sebasto & D’Costa (1995); Alp (2005); Berberoğlu & Tosunoglu (1995); Kuhlemeier, Bergh & Lagerweij, N. (1999); Bradley, Waliczek & Zajicek, (1999); Kara & Chan, (1996); Çetin (2002); Maki, A.E.Khalick, & Boujaoude, (2003); Pooley & O’Connor, (2000); Roth & Perez (1989); Topaloglu (1999); Tosunoglu (1993); Wiegel & Wiegel (1978); Thompson & Barton (1994); Leeming & Porter, (1997) have developed attitude scales to discover the environmental attitudes of students. Environmental attitude scales are designed to be applied to a wide range of the population and determine students’ environmental attitude at elementary, middle, university and junior schools. But there are a few attitude scales about environmental issues that determine students’ attitudes towards environmental issues (Şama, 2003; Özmen, Çetinkaya & Nehir, 2005; Yılmaz, Boone & Andersen, 2004).

Furthermore, these studies on environmental issues were focused on a specific educational level, such as only primary or secondary or university. Also there is no study that determines the different levels of students' attitudes towards environmental issues, which would help compare their attitudes. Therefore, this study enables us to reveal different levels of students’ attitudes towards environmental issues. It is also thought that developing an attitude scale is very useful to researchers who study this subject.

The aim of this study is to develop an attitude scale about environmental issues for students at different education levels. The main problem is that the research presented focused on recognizing the environmental issues attitudes of the students, meaning determining the nature and basic characteristics of these attitudes. For this reason, we have proposed the following objectives:

• To develop and validate an environmental issues attitude scale.

• To analyze the traits or specific facets that help to recognize the attitudes of students in different educational levels on environmental issues.

• To establish the viability of the scale for finding attitudes of students in different levels regarding environmental issues.