Abstract

The environmental education processes included in primary school period after kindergarten period have a determining role in shaping children’s perceptions about the environment they live in. Therefore, it is certainly true that only an effective environmental education programme can enable children, who will be adults in future, to know their natural environment meaningfully and correctly and to gain protective attitudes and behaviors. The fact that especially the children who have an education in the metropolitan city centers do not have opportunities to know their natural environment well enough through their own individual experiences increases the importance of the environmental education. In this study, investigating the pupils’ knowledge levels, attitudes and behaviors about natural environment is aimed at to reveal their environmental education needs. Thus, a questionnaire form with four parts was prepared to reveal the subjects’ demographics, environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors towards environment. In view of the increasing inequality of educational opportunities among the students with distinct socioeconomic levels, it can be suggested that the educational needs of the lower class are not met sufficiently in the field of the environmental education as in the general educational processes In this research, the 7th grade pupils of the primary education schools, affiliated to the Ministry of National Education, in the districts of the low socio-economic level were selected as the sample. The data were collected through the aforementioned sampling for the questionnaire, which was developed by the researchers. The variable independent of gender was dealt with and its effect on the environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviors was analyzed with “t-test.” The test results indicated that there were no significant differences among environmental knowledge level, attitudes, and behaviors of pupils by gender at the low socio economic level.