Environmental Awareness and Environment …

1 [ 1 ] Environmental Awareness and Environment related Behaviour ofTwelfth grade students in Kolkata: Effects of Stream and GenderDr. Madhumala SenguptaDr. Jayanti DasPintu Kumar MajiAbstractThe main purpose of this study is to understand the effect of Stream (Arts, Science andCommerce) and Gender on Twelfth grade students Environmental Awareness and Environ-ment related Behaviour in Kolkata. A total of 360 (Boys =180 and Girls =180) students underWest Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education in Kolkata were randomly chosen assample. Two 5-point Likert type questionnaires ( Environmental Awareness 27 items andEnvironment related Behaviour 21 items) were used for this study and were standardized bythe researchers.

2 For statistical analysis ANOVA and Coefficient of Correlation were con-ducted to determine the effect of Stream and Gender on Environmental Awareness andEnvironment related : Environmental Awareness , Environment related Behaviour, Gender, Hon ble Supreme Court on Environmental Education directed that through medium of educa-tion, an Awareness of the Environment and its protection should be taught as a compulsory of Supreme Court s directive there has been a change in school syllabus. As a result animpact has already been noticed on students level of Awareness about Environment and theirwillingness to take action to arrest Environmental Madhumala Sengupta, Associate Professor, Dept.

3 Of Education, C. Jayanti Das, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Education, C. Kumar Maji (Research Scholar)Dept. of Education, C. , Vol. 5 : 1 - 8 (January 2010)[ 2 ]The term Environmental Awareness has a broad connotation. It not only implies knowledgeabout Environment but also attitude, values and necessary skills to solve Environment related prob-lems. Moreover, Environmental Awareness is the initial step ultimately leading to the ability to carryon responsible citizenship Education is a process of recognizing values and clarifying concepts in order todevelop skills and added tools necessary to understand and appreciate the inter-relationship amongman, his culture and his bio-physical surrounding.

4 It creates an overall perspective, which acknowl-edges the fact that natural Environment and man-made Environment are interdependent. The per-spective should consider the Environment in its totality and should be a continuous lifelong processbeginning at the pre-school level and continuing through all stages. The Environmental educationshould be inter-disciplinary and examine major Environmental issues from local, national and inter-national points of view. It should utilize various educational approaches to teach and learn about andfrom the Environment with stress on practical activities and first-hand experience.

5 It is through thisprocess of education that people can be sensitized about the Environmental in India has been playing a crucial role in developing the curriculum of environmentaleducation. It has pointed out that good Environmental education at school stage of education is nottransformation of information and knowledge but it is all about developing Environmental sensitivityand Awareness by going out in nature and integrating outdoor knowledge with classroom this be the lofty ideal of Environmental education, then it is necessary to find out what ishappening in classrooms of our schools.

6 Ideally Environmental education should be holistic, locationspecific, encompassing all that is around study is an effort to find out the level of Environmental Awareness and related behavoiur ofthe students of twelfth grade stage in the city of Kolkata. This stage is an important phase ofeducation as from here the students will enter the world of adult. Hence it is imperative to find outhow far Environmental education has been effective in changing their mindset towards [14] offers a Causal Model of Environmentally Relevant Behaviour including thefollowing propositions: First, environmentally relevant behaviour lies at the end of a long causalchain involving a variety of personal and contextual factors; Second, a predisposition toward pro- Environmental behaviour lies at an intermediate point of the causal chain.

7 Third, in natural settings,the initiation of pro- Environmental behaviour is typically affected by several interacting environ-mental concern, attitudes, information, beliefs, abilities, external conditions that facilitate or impedeparticular actions and so forth; fourth, the weaker the influence of external conditions, the strongerattitude-behaviour Musser and Diamond [18] note, there has been significant interest in promoting youth sawareness of Environmental issues and those Environment -friendly practices which are commonly[ 3 ]accepted.

8 One-third of the population of Kolkata is comprised of young people and the number ofthe students in secondary education comprises one-tenth of the total population. Therefore, envi-ronmental education programme aimed specifically at secondary schools is a challenge of consid-erable importance. There have been several attempts to include Environmental subjects in thecurrent school curriculum. But attempts by several non-governmental organizations, have onlyreached a limited number of students . One of the main problems other than, having no target andstrategy on Environmental Education (EE), however, is the lack of educators in the field.

9 There-fore, our attempt in this study includes investigating the Environmental Awareness and Environ-ment related Behaviour attending Twelfth grade students in have taken stream and gender as the factors affecting the students Environmental Aware-ness and Environment related Behaviour in this study for two reasons. Firstly, students of Sciencestream are very much associated with Environmental Education than the students of Arts andCommerce streams, as many Environment related topics already incorporated in the Science sub-jects. A further concern is that in Kolkata, specially in the slum areas most girls do not attend schoolfor social and economical reasons.

10 Apart from this, in most of the studies we have found the genderdifferences among Environmental attitude, perceptions, value and action. Therefore, taking thisspecific situation it is worth considering gender differences in Environmental Awareness and Envi-ronment related number of research works have been taken up in this respect. But being a location specificissue, research on Environmental education should be undertaken in different parts of the countryfor developing a clear understanding and perspective of the issues , (1980), made an attempt to identify the Awareness of children of primary level,towards the scientific and social Environment .