International Journal of Research in Environmental Science (IJRES)

Volume 3, Issue 2, 2017, PP 41-46

ISSN 2454-9444 (Online)
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20431/2454-9444.0302005
www.arcjournals.org

Assessment of Environmental Knowledge and Attitude of

Secondary Level Students of Tangail, Bangladesh
Negar Sultana, Md. Shahadat Hossen*, Rehana Khatun
Department of Environmental Science
Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, Bangladesh
*Corresponding Author: [email protected]

Abstract: A study was conducted to assess the environmental knowledge and attitude of secondary level
students in Tangail sadar upazila of Tangail district during January to April, 2015. Three hundred students of
class nine and ten grade were randomly selected from 10 different private and government schools. The data
were collected using questionnaire survey method. Results of the study revealed that the level of environmental
knowledge of the secondary level student was high. Their average knowledge level was 15.83 (±3.07) out of 20.
They had positive attitude towards environment. The order of environmental knowledge and environmental
attitude of the students group was Science> Commerce> Arts and Arts> Commerce> Science, respectively.
Government school students had high attitude level than private schools. In case of gender of students there
were no significant differences in environmental knowledge and attitude. Urban students had higher knowledge
level and rural students had higher attitude level. Higher education of parents influenced the environmental
awareness of students. About fifty percent students thought television was one of the most important sources of
environmental awareness. The study concluded that a high level of understanding and positive attitude of
students might be achieved from the families of respondents, teachers, media, private reading and school
curriculums regarding the environment that increase the environmental view among students as well as in the
society.
Keywords: Secondary school, environmental knowledge, attitude, television, gender.

1. INTRODUCTION
Environment is now a mostly discussed issue in our daily life. From the smallest microorganisms to
the largest animals, all life on Earth are closely related to their environment. Humans are part of
nature depended on healthy ecosystems for their survival. In the same time, human activities
negatively influences the healthy environment for present and future generation as a consequence of
environmental pollution, climate change and disaster. Development of science and rising
environmental problems increased environmental awareness among the public over the last few
decades (Decamps, 2000; Thapa, 2001).
Bangladesh is facing tremendous environmental problems for its overpopulation and unplanned
industrial growth. Flood, river pollution, river erosion, deforestation, food contamination and
adulteration etc are the most common environmental issues facing the whole country. Previous study
found that most of the citizens of many developing nations were highly concerned about the state of
the environment (Dunlap et al., 1993). Environmental education is one of the most effective strategies
for increasing public environmental perception, knowledge, and attitude. Since the schools teach
young generations who are expected to be the future leaders in many different areas of the society and
who will be the decision-makers, the role of the schools in the environmental training of the public is
huge. If schools education create positive attitudes of students towards environment they would take
an active role in conserving the environment and its resources and hence preserve them for the future
generation.
In Bangladesh, environmental education is introduced at the primary level in Grade III where two
units deal with environmental education named “Introduction to Environment: Science” and
“Introduction to Environment: Social Science” (NCTB, 2003). At the secondary level, environment
related themes are emphasized in the General Science unit, which is studied by students from the
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Negar Sultana et al.

Humanities, and Business Studies group, consisting of almost 75% of the total secondary students
(BANBEIS, 2006). The secondary level is very important in Bangladesh context, since this is the
terminal education for one-third of the total number of students (BANBEIS, 2006). Although many
research studies found positive attitude of people towards the environment (Bulent et al., 2009) but
there exists a gap between the conceptual knowledge of environment and the motivation to participate
in environmental conservation. Positive attitude towards environment includes the protection of
environment and also individuals positive opinions, feelings, and behaviors towards functions of
living creatures in their lives (Turkum, 1998). The main purpose of education for environment is not
only to give information about the environment but also to gain attitudes and behaviors to develop and
protect the environment and problem solving methods. Students positive attitudes towards the
environment correlated with talking and discussion about the environment at home, watching nature
in TV and reading about the environment (Eagles and Demare, 1999). Tikka et al. (2000) found that
students involving in nature-related activities had higher level of environmental attitude.
Environmental education should be a lifelong process and environmental awareness among the
students is highly influenced by their background knowledge, attitude and sensitivity towards the
environment. The purposes of this research is to investigate the environmental knowledge and attitude
of secondary level students and also find out whether there is a difference in environmental
knowledge and attitude according to gender, school type, school location and parents education of
students.
2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
The present study was conducted in Tangail sadar upazila, Tangail district, the central region of
Bangladesh. The study was conducted by sampling 300 students from class nine and ten of five
governmental and five private schools covering both urban and rural areas. The target students of
each school were informed by their teacher in-charge that they would participate in an educational
research program. Data were collected through pre-tested questionnaire. The study was conducted for
the period of 12 weeks from January to April, 2015. In the scope of this research a six-step
questionnaire was prepared. Part A consists of general information about class, group, name of
school, age, gender, family background, parents occupation, parents educational qualification; Part B
consists of environmental knowledge; Part C consists of sources of environmental awareness; Part D
consists of level of concern in different environmental issues; Part E consists of environmental
attitude and understanding and Part F consists of different opinion on environmental related issues.
The entire questionnaire was constructed in English and finally translated to native language Bengali.
In order to determine environmental knowledge, there was 20 questions related to environmental
issues and problems where possible score ranged from 0-20. In addition there were 20 questions
related to positive and negative attitude towards environment to determine their attitude level where
possible score ranged from 0-20. The level of environmental knowledge and attitude of the
respondents was categorized into three groups (low <10; medium 10-14 and high>14 out of 20). Data
was analyzed by using SPSS and Microsoft excel. Descriptive statistic was used to describe the
characteristic of sample and proportion of answer by respondents for each item. student T-test was
also done to find out the significant level of some variables.
3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Environmental knowledge and attitude
The analysis demonstrated that the students in this study had a high level of environmental
knowledge. 79% of the student had high level of environmental knowledge whereas only 1 % had low
level of environmental knowledge (Table 1). This high level of knowledge may be due to media and
influenced by their education. The average level of environmental knowledge was 15.83(out of 20.0).
Study conducted in Malaysia showed that more than 80% of all students had the high level of attitude
and knowledge (Reja et at., 2003). The average level of environmental attitude was 16.33 (out of
20.0). Among the participants, 75% had higher level of environmental attitude and 4% had low level
of environmental attitude (Table 1). In both cases, only 20 % had medium level of environmental
knowledge and attitude. Bradley et al. (1999) found that students having higher knowledge scores
had more favorable environmental attitudes.

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Assessment of Environmental Knowledge and Attitude of Secondary Level Students of Tangail,
Bangladesh

Table 1. Level of environmental knowledge and attitude of students

Level of Level of
No. of No. of
environmental Percentage environmental Percentage
respondents respondents
knowledge Attitude
Low 3 1 Low 12 4
Medium 61 20 Medium 64 21
High 236 79 High 224 75
Total 300 100 Total 300 100
Comparison of environmental knowledge and attitude level
Figure 1 (a) shows the average level of environmental knowledge and attitude based on science,
commerce and arts group, where bar indicates the standard deviation. It is found that there was a
difference in average level of environmental knowledge and attitude, where science group students
had higher environmental knowledge and arts students had lower environmental knowledge. There
was statistical significant difference in environmental knowledge level among different groups’
students (F=15.05, p-value =5.91e-07). Many environmental problems and their solutions are science
related where students actively engage through both theoretically and practically. In case of
environmental attitude level, reverse condition found where arts students had higher environmental
attitude and science had lower. There was statistical significant difference in environmental attitude
level among different groups’ students (F=12.23, p-value =7.82e-06). Mishra (2012) found that the
science students knowledge were significantly higher than arts students of govt. schools and science
students were more aware about environmental problems in comparison to arts students.

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

Figure 1. Comparison of environmental knowledge and attitude level of secondary school students based on a)
study group; b) school type; c) school location and d) gender
From figure 1(b), it is found that there was small difference in environmental attitude level between
government and private school where government school students had higher environmental attitude
than private school students. But no difference was found in knowledge level between two types of
school. Statistically there was no significant difference on the average level of environmental
knowledge (t = -0.1689, df = 298, p-value = 0.866) but significant difference observed on attitude (t =

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Negar Sultana et al.

2.1536, df = 298, p-value = 0.03207) of government schools and private schools students. Poonam
(2013) found significant difference between government and private secondary school students on
environmental awareness in Punjab, India.
There was no significant difference between rural and urban students on the average level of
environmental knowledge (t = 1.1756, df = 298, p-value = 0.2407) where the average environmental
knowledge of urban and rural school students were 15.9 and 15.6, respectively [Figure 1(c)].
However students living in rural areas had better environmental attitude than urban living students
and have significant variation on environmental attitude (-2.5464, df = 298, p-value = 0.01139).
Environmental knowledge of urban students at secondary level were better than the rural students in
India (Behera and Samal, 2015).
According to gender no difference was observed in environmental knowledge level but small
difference was found in environmental attitude level between male and female students [Figure 1(d)].
There was no significant different between male and female students on the average level of
environmental knowledge (t = 0.3832, df = 298, p-value = 0.7019) and attitude (t = -1.3347, df = 298,
p-value = 0.183). Behera and Samal (2015) also reported that there was no significant difference
between boys and girls in relation to their environmental knowledge in West Bengal, India.
Comparison of environmental knowledge and attitude level based on parental education
Generally it is thought that parents having higher education make positive contributions to children
environmental knowledge and attitude. It was found that environmental knowledge and attitude levels
of students whose parents education status was Bachelor or above was higher than those of others
students (Table 2). There was no statistically significant difference between environmental attitude
scores of secondary students in terms of parents educational status but difference observed in
knowledge level and parents educational status. It is also found that in environmental knowledge and
attitude level student father’s education status contribute more than mother’s. Makki et al. (2003)
found that participants with “more educated” fathers had significantly higher environmental
knowledge scores, while there was no significant relationship between the mother’s educational level
and the participants’ environmental knowledge scores in the same study. Tayci and Uysal (2012)
reported that there was no significant relationship between the parent’s educational status and the 8 th
grade students environmental knowledge and attitude in Turkey. The study by Gambro and Switzky
(1999), noticed that the level of formal education a student’s parent received was significantly related
to the student’s level of knowledge concerning environmental issues.
Table 2. Comparison of environmental knowledge and attitude level based on parental educational level
Father N Mean Std Mother N Mean Std
education level deviation education level deviation
Below SSC 36 14.83 2.19 Below SSC 60 15.32 2.06
Knowledge SSC to HSC 99 15.58 1.77 SSC to HSC 139 15.76 1.89
Bechelor or 167 16.21 2.07 Bechelor or 99 16.19 2.16
above above
Below SSC 36 17.69 2.18 Below SSC 60 16.88 2.92
Attitude SSC to HSC 99 16.42 3.05 SSC to HSC 139 16.24 3.26
Bechelor or 167 16.00 3.26 Bechelor or 99 16.17 3.04
above above
Sources of environmental awareness
According to Figure 2, majority of the respondents (49.2%) said that television is the source of
environmental awareness whereas 14.9% told about radio, 10.9% said about from elder, 11.3%
mentioned to course curriculum and 13.7% claim NGO. Number of channels of Television and FM
radio have risen a lot in last decade in Bangladesh. Television coverage of environmental problems
has increased dramatically in last few decades. Newspaper and radio coverage also rise significantly.
It is possible to learn about environmental problems and their solution without learning much about
environmental concept in subject matters. According to McKibben (1992) television is the primary
source of environmental information. Pawlowski (1996) studied the perception of environmental
problems by young people in Poland where he found that the main source of environmental
information for participating students were TV (television) (70% at TU and 53.5% at UMCS). Said et
al. (2007) also found same results for secondary schools students in Malaysia.

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Assessment of Environmental Knowledge and Attitude of Secondary Level Students of Tangail,
Bangladesh

Figure 2. Sources of environmental awareness of the respondents

4. CONCLUSION
The results of the study indicated that secondary (grade 9 and 10) students of Tangail had higher level
of environmental knowledge and attitude towards environmental issues. Similar environmental
knowledge was observed regarding gender, school types, and school location but difference found in
study group and environmental attitude level. Environmental sustainability will depend on our future
actions which will be regulated and recommended by present young generation. Therefore, students
environmental knowledge and attitude is an important issues for our healthy ecosystem. We need to
think about curriculum content and structure, teaching methods, and development of suitable
resources regarding environmental issues. Teachers need to use variety of innovative teaching
strategies and student should be encouraged to take positive actions in their daily life. Moreover
electronic media and NGOs should conduct some educational program on environmental issues to
aware everyone. All students should take part in formal and informal education classes to promote
their knowledge, understanding and awareness on environmental issue.
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