A study on elementary school students' and middle school students' attitudes toward environmental problems

환경 문제에 대한 평가 도구 개발 및 국민학생과 중학생의 태도 조사 연구

Concidering environmental education as an ultimate resolution for environmental problems, we conducted a study focusing on affective matters. An instrument was developed to evaluate attitudes of elementary and middle school students toward environmental problems. To develop a reliable Likert-type evaluation instrument scale with which emotional intensity could be judged, mean, standard deviation, response frequency distribution, discrimination index, reliability were calculated. As a result, 21 statements for recognition level and 14 statements for behavioral level were made(The Cronbach alpha coefficient of the instrument was .786). This instrument was used to evaluate 5th and 6th grade elementary school students and 1st and 2nd grade middle school students(total number of subjects was 980). The result of this survey can be summarized as follows. 1. Students recognized the seriousness of environmental problems but they did not behave in such a manner as to prevent it. 2. As a result of t-test, behavioral level score of elemenatary school students was significantly higher than that of middle school students(p<.001). 3. This study showed that there was a significant correlation between the recognition level score and the behavioral level score(r=.386, p<.001). 4. Two-Way ANOVA was used to analyze that there was any significant difference according to grade and sex. The results were as follows. (1) No significant difference was found in total score. (2) On recognition level, female students' score was signigicantly higher than that of male students(p<.01). (3) On behavioral level, higher-grade students' score was lower than that of lower-grade-students (p<.001).