Environmental Awareness And Attitude Of Senior Secondary School Students In Ankpa Education Zone Of Kogi State
Need help with a related project topic or New topic? Send Us Your Topic
DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE PROJECT MATERIAL
Environmental Awareness And Attitude Of Senior Secondary School Students In Ankpa Education Zone Of Kogi State
ABSTRACT
The study sought to ascertain the environmental awareness and attitude of senior secondary school pupils in the Anpka education zone. Six research topics and four hypotheses led the investigation. The relevant literature was reviewed under three key headings: conceptual framework, theoretical framework, and review of empirical investigations.
The study used a descriptive survey research design. The study’s demographic included all senior secondary school class one (SS1) pupils from fifty-five (55) secondary schools across three local government areas in Ankpa education zone. The zone had 2,475 (2475) SS1 students.
The proportionate stratified sampling technique was used to sample twenty-eight (28) schools out of fifty-five (55) secondary schools, as well as six hundred and sixteen (616) pupils out of two thousand four hundred and seventy-five. Data were collected using two instruments. The instruments are the Student Environmental Awareness Scale (SEAS) and the Environmental Attitude Scale for Students (EASS).
The tools were created by the researcher and confirmed by three specialists from the University of Nigeria Nsukka. To address the study questions, the acquired data was analysed using mean and standard deviation.
The study’s hypotheses were tested using the t-test. The study’s main results based on the analysed data were that senior secondary school students have low environmental awareness and attitude, and that there is no significant difference in the mean score of male and female students on environmental awareness and attitude.
The study concluded that senior secondary school students in the Anpka education zone have low environmental awareness and attitude; there is no significant difference between male and female students in terms of environmental awareness and attitude; and there is a significant difference between urban and rural students’ environmental awareness and attitude.
The study proposed organising conferences, seminars, and workshops for teacher retraining, as well as incorporating additional environmental content into relevant senior high school topic curricula.
Chapter One: Introduction
Background to the Study
The environment is the set of circumstances that surround an individual or group of organisms. Anikweze (2008) defines the environment as the physical and non-physical space in which humans begin their lives, mature, grow, develop, and ultimately die. Anikweze (2008) describes such an environment as physical, mental, emotional, or social.
These perspectives on the environment imply that every single aspect, biotic or abiotic, that influences an individual’s life forms the individual’s environment.
Thus, the environment is a critical aspect in an individual’s growth and development because it has the power to construct or destroy them. According to Eboh (2009), the environment refers to a person’s surrounds and the objects they contain.
1. Human activities are having an increasing impact on the environment. Ehrlich (2006) stated that climate change, produced by greenhouse gas emissions, is a serious environmental problem, as is land degradation.
Ehrlich (2006) went on to explain that stratospheric ozone depletion has a range of negative repercussions on the environment, including broad damage to humans, forests, and agriculture.
According to Ehrlich (2006), land degradation is caused by population pressure, rampant deforestation, overgrazing, and the abuse of agrochemicals, which reduces land’s productive capacity or ability to perform environmental services such as nutrient recycling.
The World Health Organisation (WHO, 2010) has linked emerging diseases and leading causes of death worldwide to environmental change. The paper also states that a variety of variables are now contributing to the emergence and spread of dangerous diseases.
Patton (2002) observed that people are generating huge environmental change by destroying forests, impounding rivers, creating unhealthy urban environments, and changing habitats and eliminating predators that favour disease-carrying organisms such as mice, rats, and mosquitoes, among others.
In the same spirit, Cunningham and Cunningham (2002) discovered that approximately three-quarters of the world’s major fish stocks are overfished or harvested at an unsustainable rate, and soil degradation has affected two-thirds of global agricultural land in the previous 50 years.
Awareness and consciousness are in some ways synonymous. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2009) defines awareness as the knowledge or understanding of a particular subject or situation, the ability to notice something using sense, and also refers to someone’s idea, feelings, or opinions about life
while consciousness is also defined by the above source as the condition of being awake and able to understand what is happening around you, the state of knowing that something exists or is true, and also implies Chinedu (2008) defined awareness as the state of being aware and able to understand what is going on around you.
In keeping with the preceding perspectives, Wikipedia (2009) defines awareness as perception of, conscious of, acquainted with, enlightened with, mindfulness of, or cognisance of something.
In the context of this study, and in accordance with the preceding viewpoints, awareness entails understanding and knowledge of the activities and occurrences (such as desertification, land degradation, climate change, deforestation, atmospheric and land pollution, flooding, etc.) occurring in one’s surroundings.
According to Abini (2006), attitude is an acquired propensity. Abini went on to clarify that learners create attitudes by liking or disliking, favourable or unfavourable, events in their environment. Good (2001) defined attitude as a state of mental and emotional preparedness to react to previously conditioned or connected stimuli.
Williams (2000) defined attitude as a person’s readiness to perform in a specific way, as conveyed through words, gestures, or facial expressions. The above viewpoint is supported by the fact that action can speak louder than words.
Kent (2002) defined attitudes as a mental and natural state of readiness organised by experience that exerts a directive or dynamic impact on the individual’s responses to all objects and situations with which it is associated.
Thus, environmental attitude refers to an individual’s manner of thinking and acting in relation to environmental quality, land degradation, climate change, deforestation, atmospheric and land pollution, flooding, and other issues. It expresses an individual’s feelings and concerns regarding the aforementioned phenomena.
In relation to the preceding debate, an attempt has been made to raise students’ knowledge and attitude towards their environment. In secondary schools, for example, relevant curriculum content such as environmental pollution, environmental hazards, natural and human resource management, land degradation, climate change, sanitation, effects of industrial concentration, composition of atmospheric gases, weather and climate, and climate classification were incorporated into some subjects such as chemistry, physics, biology, geography, agriculture, and social studies.
These themes are utilised to raise students’ understanding of their environment while also instilling in them an environmentally friendly mindset that will allow them to live and interact with their surroundings in a kindly manner.
In relation to the foregoing, Ishaya and Abaje (2008) observed that secondary school teachers have been instilling environmental content into their various subjects with students in order to increase their knowledge of the environment and positively influence their attitude towards the environment.
Againde (2006) observed that schools use classroom education to raise awareness of significant environmental issues like as deforestation, climate change, land degradation, and so on. Chinedu (2008) agrees that the curriculum content of most secondary school subjects might be effectively used to raise awareness of environmental issues and foster good attitudes towards environmental problem solving.
However, it may take longer to realise the benefits of school-based efforts to raise students’ environmental understanding and attitudes. This is because, aside from students, the majority of society’s population has continued to engage in behaviours that are harmful to the health of the environment.
Human activities such as bush burning, deforestation, and the use of fossil fuels such as petrol, coal, and crude oil all contribute to environmental problems. It is important noting that as long as these human behaviours that are harmful to the ecosystem remain, their repercussions will continue to be borne by humans in the environment.
As a result, it is necessary to examine the extent to which instructional delivery in schools using the infusion strategy has changed students’ knowledge and attitudes towards their environment.
Need help with a related project topic or New topic? Send Us Your Topic