Yehia Abed

Environmental Awareness and Attitudes Among School-age Children: Socio-demographic Differences and the Level of Awareness and Attitudes Toward Environmental Issues in Gaza, Palestine Yehia Abed

Nurturing and science education play a significant role in developing a positive attitude toward the environment. Several researchers have shown that there is an important link between environmental science education and environmental awareness and attitude. The purpose of this study is to determine the level of environmental awareness and attitude among male and female students of class 9 in Gaza city- Palestine, and to investigate the relation between environmental awareness and attitude. The researchers constructed a questionnaire to measure both the environmental awareness and attitude. The results indicated that the students? have a moderate level of environmental awareness (70.2%) and their positive attitude toward the environment was low (64.33%). One of the most interesting results is that, males have a significantly higher environmental awareness than females, while females have shown more positive attitude toward environment than males. Therefore, the findings of this study are useful to accentuate the importance of enriching our students' background in environmental knowledge and awareness, with equal opportunity for both males and females students.