Secondary school students' interests, attitudes and values concerning school science related to environmental issues in Finland

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between students' interests in environmental issues, attitudes to environmental responsibility and biocentric values in school science education. The factors were investigated within the framework of three moderators: gender, school and residential area of the school. The survey was carried out using the international ROSE questionnaire with ninth‐grade students (N = 3626) from 68 schools. Likert‐type items were categorised with explorative factor analysis, and multivariate analysis of variance was used to study the importance of the moderators. There were significant correlations between the attitude and value factors. Interest and attitude were also significantly correlated, but the correlation between interest and value was negligible. Girls' attitude was significantly more positive and their biocentric value stronger than those of the boys, while in terms of interest, the gender difference was small. The effect of residential area was negligible, but there were significant differences between schools in all the factors studied. A school's own environmental projects and participation in programmes linked to environmental education or education for sustainable development was suggested to enhance students' interest in environmental issues. The role of interests, attitudes and values in teaching environmental issues are important fields for future research in science, environmental and sustainability education.

Keywords:

• environmental interest
• attitude and value
• gender
• school
• residential area

Acknowledgements

The preparation of the paper was financed by the SEED project (Sustainable Food Education for Self‐Efficacy Development – SEED – How to encourage future citizens to act for a sustainable society), under the auspices of the Academy of Finland, project number 128569.

Notes

1. According to Hesselink, van Kempen, and Wals (2000), the relationship between EE and ESD can be understood in several ways: EE is a part of ESD, ESD is a part of EE; EE and ESD partially overlap, or as in this study, ESD is a stage in the evolution of EE.

2. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA, OECD 2007) is an internationally standardised assessment jointly developed by the participating countries and administered to 15‐year‐olds in schools. The survey has been carried out every third year since 2000. There were 57 participating countries in the third assessment in 2006. The tests are typically administered to between 4500 and 10,000 students in each country. Website: http://www.pisa.oecd.org/

3. Urban municipalities are towns, where 90% of people live in centres and at least one of the centres includes 15,000 residents. In semi‐urban municipalities, 60–90% of the people live in centres of 4000–15,000 residents. In rural municipalities, less than 60% of the people live in centres of less than 15,000 residents, or where 60–90% of people live in centres but the number of residents in the largest centre is less than 4000.

4. The effect size of the difference (Cohen's d) was calculated as (d = M ₁ − M ₂/SD_pooled) where SD_pooled = √[(SD₁ ² + SD₂ ²)/2]. An effect size (d) of the difference between .2 and .3 is ‘small’, around .5 ‘medium’ and .8 or larger ‘large’ (Cohen 1988).