The purpose of the environmental education is to educate individuals as environment friendly persons who are sensitive to their environments and who have positive attitudes and behaviors towards environmental issues. Due to its being compulsory and main education in our country, the elementary education conveys great importance in terms of teaching environmental issues. Instead of transmitting core information on the environmental issues in elementary education, the students should be encouraged to gain necessary upbringing and attitudes concerning the environmental issues. Hence, it would be very beneficial to determine the factors which affect the attitudes of the students on the environmental issues. Regarding this fact, the present study intended to examine and figure out the elementary students attitudes towards the environmental issues. The data of the study is gathered through a questionnaire entitled Environment Attitude Questionnaire for Elementary School students which was developed by the researcher. The gathered data were analyzed by means of SPSS software program. The independent variables of the research are, Gender Academic success levels, Educational backgrounds of the fathers and mothers, and economical conditions of the parents; whereas, the attitudes of the elementary students were defined as the dependent variable. The results reveled that the gender and the students academic success levels prove significant difference on the attitudes of the students, whereas, educational backgrounds and economical conditions of the parents do not have any significant effect on the attitudes of the students towards environmental issues.
Key words: Environmental education, environmental attitude, elementary students
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