The evaluation of first stage elementary school students? attitudes and behaviours towards environment

This thesis aims to assess attitudes and responsible behaviors of first grade primary school students. The sample of the quantitative research consisted of 1200 students of fourth and fifth grade who were selected from various 15 public schools, and the sample of qualitative research consisted of 36 students from 3 public schools in Bingöl. Stratified sample were selected to decide sample size. The quantitative data was obtained from application of the Environmental Attitudes Scale (EAS) and Environmental Responsible Behavior Scale (ERBS). EAS that comprises 32 items and three dimensional ERBS; in total 21 items were developed by the researcher. The qualitative data was obtained through interview form, comprising 12 open-ended questions. 36 students from first, second and third grades of primary schools were interviewed in qualitative research. The responses to the questions given during interview form were subjected to content analysis.Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of internal coherence was used in order to determine the reliability of the applied scale for the first grade second term students. For the first scale .84, for the sub-dimension of the environmental interest of the second scale .84, for the cleanness-saving sub-dimension .69, and for the sub-dimension of animal love .55 Cronbach's alpha value coefficient was calculated. It was calculated .86 Cronbach's alpha value for the whole of the second scale. Dispersion characteristics of the quantitative data were examined and the data was analyzed by using SPSS 17.0 statistical package program. Descriptive statistics, Mann Whitney U test, and Kruskal Wallis test were conducted to analyze quantitative data. LISREL 8.51 statistic program was used to confirm the sample scale.The main finding of this research is that, there were no differences observed between the class variable in the students? attitudes and responsible behaviors towards the environment. But according to the students' gender, parents' education level, parents? occupation and settlement of the parents, there were found significant differences between attitudes and responsible behavior towards the environment.Qualitative content analysis method was used to analyze the data. Students' personal information in the analysis of qualitative data collected from this study, the frequency and percentage techniques were used to identify attitudes towards the environment.As a conclusion, the results of this study will shed on the attempts on policy. It aims to help the environmental education on curriculum development.