JOURNAL OF LIAONING TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY

FACTORS AFFECTING ENVIRONMENT-RELATED BEHAVIOURS OF SECONDARY SCHOOL SOCIAL STUDIES STUDENTS IN IBARAPA NORTH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF OYO STATE

Daramola C. O. (Ph.D) & Ojebisi O. O.

ABSTRACT

Today, Nigerians and human beings all over the world are facing one form of environmental problem or the other. These problems have come from various sources include global population explosion, growing demands for food, deforestation, and extraction of biological resources, poverty and uncontrolled use of the world resources, among others. Various steps have been taken to address the problems but little attention has been paid to the causal factors of these problems which are related to people’s behaviour. It is on this basis that the study focuses on the factors affecting environment-related behaviour of secondary school Social Studies students in Ibarapa North Local Government Area of Oyo State.

The study adopted the descriptive survey research design using one thousand, three hundred and twelve respondents and the questionnaire was tagged “Predictor of Students’ Responsible Environmental Behaviour Scale (PSREBS) and Environmental Liteartcy Test (ELT). This test was designed to measure students’ feeling and tendencies about the environment. Three research questions were raised and analyzed using frequency counts, percentage and the multiple regression analysis.

Results of the study indicated that students’ moderate level of cognitive skills, it also showed no significant difference between urban public schools students’ and rural public school students environmental related behaviour (ERB). On the other hand, the students in urban private schools engaged in ERB more than their counterparts in public urban and public rural schools. The students could not show high willingness to put much effort into taking responsible action. In addition, it was revealed in the study that knowledge of environmental problems and issues did not explain the variation in ERB.

The study concluded that, environmental education contributes positively to the environmental literacy in terms of knowledge, attitude and skills. It is, therefore, recommended that environmental education content should be vigorously integrated into Social Studies curriculum and environmental education should start from the nursery school and progress to the university level so that students could be environmentally responsible and literate.

Key word: Environmental literacy, Environmental responsible behaviour, Nigeria, Oyo State