Examination of primary school students' attitudes towards the environment

The aim of the study was to investigate primary school students' attitudes towards the environment and whether their attitudes towards the environment differed according to gender and grade level variables. A total of 40 students from a village school in Birecik district of Şanlıurfa during 2018-2019 academic year participated in the study. In order to collect data, individual interviews were done using an interview form consisting of 15 main questions and related sub-questions, which were adapted by Kahriman-Ozturk, Olgan, and Tuncer (2012) from The Children's Attitudes toward the Environment Scale-Preschool Version (Musser & Diamond, 1999). The data obtained from the interviews were analyzed by coding students attitudes as ecocentric or anthropocentric based on the framework stated by Thompson and Barton (1994). Frequency values and chi-square tests for independence were utilized to examine whether students' attitudes towards the environment differed depending on gender and grade level variables. Results of the study showed that most of the students had pro-environmental attitudes towards inspected environmental issues except for playground preferences. When the reasons of these attitudes were examined, it was determined that students had ecocentric attitudes towards some issues whereas anthropocentric attitudes towards others. It was found that students' attitudes towards the reasons of thinking that animals were important differed according to gender variable but not according to grade level variable. In addition to this, attitudes towards other environmental issues did not differ according to gender and grade level variables. Considering the results of the study, various suggestions were made for future research and in order to provide primary school students with having ecocentric attitudes.