Determination environmental awareness in elemantary schools:the case of the city of Adana

The rapidly growing environmental problems in recent years have started to lead to serious problems and have become dangerous for all living things. The protection of the environment as well as the attempts to be applied to protect the environment is only possible through an increase in environmental awareness. Throughout this research, the environmental awareness of the students studying and the staff working in the primary schools in the central districts of the city of Adana; Çukurova, Sarıçam, Seyhan and Yüreğir was aimed to be investigated. Two separate standard surveys were carried out in terms of investigating the student and the staff?s views and attitudes concerning environmental awareness and environmental problems. The survey was applied randomly through private interviews to 20 students studying in 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades and 4 staff in the previously determined 10 primary schools in each of the districts within the research study from March to May in 2012. The survey was conducted on 800 students and 160 staff in a total of 40 schools throughout the city of Adana. According to the result of the study the environmental awareness point of the students and the staff in the primary schools in central towns of Adana city was found to be 66,40. No significant difference was found between primary schools, gender, age and economic income in terms of environmental awareness level. Keywords: environmental awareness, environmental sensitivity, environmental attitudes, Adana