Environmental citizenship: What level of knowledge, attitude, skill and participation the students own?

Abstract

Now-a-days people think of their responsibility to maintain and protect the environment and this is the responsibility of all including the government, private sectors and individuals. The concept of Environmental Citizenship (EC) redefines the relationship of people and nature and reiterates that environmental conservation is everybody's sole responsibility at all time, based on one's life choices in minimizing ecological impact on earth. In light of this, this study is designed around the concept of EC that gravitates around the Malaysian primary and secondary school student's knowledge, attitude, skills and participation in their daily activities and lifestyles that may bring a positive or negative impact on the environment. Both quantitative and qualitative research approaches were used in this study. The quantitative technique took on the form of a survey administration where 2853 Year-5 primary and secondary school students participated. Qualitative data was collected by open-ended response of the students. The findings determine that the current environmental citizenship level of students is low to moderate. There are many areas within EC domain where students’ level of Knowledge, attitude, skills and participation must be increased to reach expected EC level. In a wider perspective, this study hopes to act as leverage towards more emphasis of EE by Ministry of Education (MOE) in the science curriculum. Most importantly, the findings will also enable the stakeholders to make evidence-based decisions on the contributory factors that can improve the current EC among students, be it budget, Environmental Education (EE) materials or even an EE policy statement in the National Education Policy (NEP).