중학생들의 전지구적 및 지역적 환경 문제 인식에 관한 연구

A Study on Middle School Students' Perceptions of Global and Local Environmental Issues

This paper focused on examining the middle school students' perceptions of characteristics(personal knowledge, human responsibility, impact on personal life, and predicted trend, behavior will) of 10 global and 8 local environmental issues. Subjects(N=516) demonstrated by completing a survey that they perceived the characteristics of issues differently on global and local scales, and to a degree those characteristics are related. First, middle school students' perceptions of global and local environmental issues were above mid-point mainly, and perceptions of local environmental issues were higher than those of global environmental issues. At perceptions of characteristics, They perceived that the personal knowledge of global environmental issues were higher than those of local issues, that the human responsibility effects on global environmental issues more than local environmental issues, that global environmental issues in the future, will be more serious. For each environmental issues, the perception of global warming among the global issues was highest, the perception of yellow dust and air pollution among the local issues was highest. For perceptions of characteristics, behavior will to solve the environmental issues was lower than that of 4 characteristics(personal knowledge, human responsibility, impact on personal life, and predicted trend). Second, there was significant difference of the perceptions of two scale environmental issues for area and sex. It showed that Seoul students' perceptions were higher than Kong-ju students' perceptions according to area, and that girl students' perceptions were higher than boy students' perceptions according to sex. Third, correlations among issues were significant. Especially, it was positive relationship between knowledge and human responsibility, human responsibility and impact on personal human responsibility and predicted trend. Educators and communicators should take into account the perceived characteristics of environmental issues and choose effective information sources and teaching methods to improve students' understanding of human-induced environmental changes.