Defining the attitudes of the students at art and science centers against recyling of plastic waste and its effects on environment (a case study from West Black Sea Region)

Environmental problems which have been growing for the past years have negative impacts on people?s lives . People from all walks of people should be made aware by environment education so as to tackle environmental problems . Although the gifted people comprise a small part of the society, they can mold future and even be helpful for the humanity if they are processed like a precious mine. It is thought that the environment education to be given to those students will hold significance for solving environmental problems growing in both our country and globalised world . The purpose of this research is to examine 6th ,7th , 8th grade students? attitudes about recycling of plastic waste and its effect on environment. The students study at gifted students? school (BİLSEM) in West Black Sea Region and participated in the research in the second part of 2011 -2012 academic year . Survey screening model was used in the study carried out for the current situation portrayed . Questionnaire used in this study consists of two parts . Personal information is in the first chapter and in the second chapter the ?Environmental Attitude Scale? for elementary school students prepared by Avan et al. (2011) is available . The scale measures the cognitive, affective, behaviour dimensions of attitudes. While developing questionnaire it was found out that knowledge scale had three factors, emotion scale had four factors and behaviour scale had five factors. In the comparisons of the attitudes of BILSEM Students according to gender, independent samples t-test was used ; in order to find out whether the attitudes differ significantly according to ?class level?, ?education level of parents?, income of the family? ANOVA was used . Students at BILSEM have positive attitudes. They showed significant differences according to ?gender? , ?class level? and ?education level of father? variants but they did not show differences according to level of mother?s education? and ?monthly income of family? variants. Keywords: The science and art center, environment education, environmental attitude scale, recycling, plastic wastes, gifted student