Addressing the attitudinal gap towards improving the environment: a case study from a primary school in Slovenia

Abstract It is widely acknowledged that environmental literacy, in the early stages of education, can provide a strong foundation for future environmental behaviours, as well as help in the transition towards more sustainable societies. This paper is based upon an evaluation of the environmental attitudes of students in a primary school in rural Slovenia. The attitudes were assessed according to the students’ behaviours in their family (primary) and school (secondary) and family contexts. The results show that traditional teaching, in this school, accounts for only one-third of the recognised factors that influence the students’ environmental behaviours. The other factors that foster environmental behaviours include the primary and secondary social environments, the structural and infrastructural condition in the school, and gender, where emotional attitudes play a key role. The authors suggest that, in order to more adequately address the gap between learning and acting, school administrators, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders should integrate an array of sustainability issues throughout formal and informal efforts so as to more effectively encourage the development of positive environmental attitudes, and behaviours among their youth and among themselves as role models. Additionally, school principals are urged to improve infrastructural and structural, attitudinal and procedural parameters at the schools, and to change the curricula in order to foster pro-environmental behaviours.

[1]  Hans O. Andersen,et al.  Views of elementary and middle school Turkish students toward environmental issues , 2004 .

[2]  J. DeCoster.  Overview of Factor Analysis , 1998 .

[3]  Markku Kuitunen,et al.  Effects of Educational Background on Students' Attitudes, Activity Levels, and Knowledge Concerning the Environment , 2000 .

[4]  D. Davidson,et al.  Gender and Environmental Risk Concerns , 1996 .

[5]  E. Weiss.  United Nations Conference on Environment and Development , 1992, International Legal Materials.

[6]  Rodrigo Lozano.  Orchestrating organisational change for corporate sustainability : strategies to overcome resistance to change and to facilitate institutionalization , 2009 .

[7]  Rodrigo Lozano,et al.  Collaboration as a pathway for sustainability , 2007 .

[8]  I. Ajzen,et al.  Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research , 1977 .

[9]  K. Lewin.  Frontiers in Group Dynamics , 1947 .

[10]  L. Chawla.  Significant Life Experiences Revisited: A Review of Research on Sources of Environmental Sensitivity. , 1998 .

[11]  R. Lozano.  Orchestrating Organisational Changes for Corporate Sustainability , 2007 .

[12]  L. Jansen,et al.  The challenge of sustainable development , 2003 .

[13]  Rodrigo Lozano,et al.  Developing collaborative and sustainable organisations , 2008 .

[14]  S. Oskamp,et al.  Effort as a Moderator of the Attitude-Behavior Relationship: General Environmental Concern and Recycling , 1996 .

[15]  J. M. Hines,et al.  Analysis and synthesis of research on responsible environmental behavior: A meta-analysis. , 1987 .

[16]  James Blake.  Overcoming the ‘value‐action gap’ in environmental policy: Tensions between national policy and local experience , 1999 .

[17]  T. M. Waliczek,et al.  Relationship Between Environmental Knowledge and Environmental Attitude of High School Students , 1999 .

[18]  John William Stir,et al.  Restructuring teacher education for sustainability: student involvement through a “strengths model” , 2004 .

[19]  L. DeChano.  A Multi-Country Examination of the Relationship Between Environmental Knowledge and Attitudes , 2006 .

[20]  F. Kaiser,et al.  ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDE AND ECOLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR , 1999 .

[21]  C. Tekkaya,et al.  Turkish Students' Views on Environmental Challenges with respect to Gender: An Analysis of ROSE Data , 2009 .

[22]  Kes McCormick,et al.  Education for sustainable development and the Young Masters Program , 2005 .

[23]  H. Juahir,et al.  The level of environmental awareness among students to fulfill the aspiration of National Philosophy of Education. , 2009 .

[24]  William Scott,et al.  Sustainable Development and Learning: framing the issues , 2003 .

[25]  Mehmet Ecevit,et al.  Attitudes and Behavior toward the Environment , 2002 .

[26]  John S. Gambro,et al.  A National Survey of High School Students' Environmental Knowledge , 1996 .

[27]  Glenn Gamst,et al.  Applied Multivariate Research: Design and Interpretation , 2005 .

[28]  Kara Chan,et al.  Environmental attitudes and behaviour of secondary school students in Hong Kong , 1996 .

[29]  David G. Chapman,et al.  Environmental Attitudes and Behavior of Primary and Secondary Students in Asian Cities: An Overview Strategy for Implementing an Eco-schools Programme , 2001 .

[30]  D. Orr.  Ecological literacy : education and the transition to a postmodern world , 1991 .

[31]  L. Chawla.  Life Paths Into Effective Environmental Action , 1999 .

[32]  A. Kollmuss,et al.  Mind the Gap: Why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior? , 2002 .

[33]  I. Jolliffe.  Principal Component Analysis , 2002 .

[34]  Luc Hens,et al.  Monitoring environmental management at primary schools in South Africa , 2010 .

[35]  E. Rogers.  Diffusion of Innovations , 1962 .

[36]  Scientific.  International Standard Classification of Education, ISCED 1997 , 2003 .

[37]  G. Çetin,et al.  Enhancing students’environmental awareness , 2010 .