Awareness and Attitudes of High School Students on Climate Change

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

This research is significant to educators since it will yield a baseline data on the awareness and attitude of high school students on climate change. These data will be a basis for different inputs for the potential enhancement of the curriculum in science, increasing the levelof awareness and attitude of the students through internet and information dissemination from the school authorities.

METHODS

The method is quantitative research and is of a descriptive type. According to Adanza, Bermundo, and Rasonabe (2009), it is designed to gather information about the present conditions, status or trend, and to deal with what is prevailing. This research involved High School students from the Division of Calamba City, Cluster 1 public secondary school. The minimum sample size of 2,398 was taken based on the Cochran's formula to estimate the proportion of a dichotomous-response. Non-parametric Somers' delta (or Somers’d, for short), is a non-parametric measure of the strength and direction of association that exists between an ordinal dependent variable and an ordinal independent variable.

RESULTS

In general, the students showed a dismal level of climate change awareness which might have resulted in the poor level of attitude/ behavior towards climate change. Satisfactory level of technical knowledge in climate change significantly predicted the improvement in attitude and behavior -thus, the null hypothesis, "there is no significant association between the students' level of climate change awareness and attitude towards climate change" was rejected. Thus, it is crucial that students should achieve satisfactory knowledge level on climate change in order to improve his/her attitude and behavior towards climate change.

DISCUSSIONS

The students showed a dismal level of climate change awareness which might have resulted in the poor level of attitude/behavior towards climate change. Environmental education, proactive campaigns, and relevant programs should be organized and the strict implementation of the local ordinances should be given priority to promoting awareness and practice in the students on understanding the causes and effects of climate change.