A Study on the Environmental Awareness and Attitude of Elementary School Students

초등학교 학생들의 환경인식과 태도에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study is to survey and analyze the environmental awareness and attitude of elementary school students, adapting the CHEAKS(Children's Environmental Attitude and Knowledge Scale) for Korean elementary students, which is the valid-tested tools for children's environmental awareness and altitude. The subjects are 580 students from 6 elementary schools. The differences of the environmental attitude are surveyed and analyzed by environmental education activities, such as environmental activities in school and “the school forest movement”, and environmental awareness and concern. The results are as followings: First, the subjects replied that the environmental problems are very serious, such as atmospheric pollution(37.6%), water pollution(22.2%) and food waste(16.3%), but they are relatively optimistic of the future environment. Second, the verbal commitment subdomain and the affect domain are evaluated higher than the actual commitment subdomain, and the environmental issues of water, energy and recycling are considered more importantly than other issues such as environmental generals, pollutions and animals. Third, the grade and the sex have little effect on the environmental attitude, but the environmental education activities have great positive effect, such as the experience of environmental camping, the education of saving resources, waste separation and the experience of raising plants and flowers. Fourth, the students with high awareness and concern about the environmental problems have high environmental attitude. Especially, the awareness and concern on the flowers and plants have very strong correlation with environmental attitude, regardless of the subdomains. Finally, the students from the school participating “the school forest movement” have relatively positive environmental attitude. Particularly, the participation of students and the positive approach of the school have positively great influence on the students' environmental attitude in all of 3 subdomains and 6 environmental issues.