Education for Sustainability: Knowledge, Attitudes & Behavior of Secondary School Teachers

This study attempts to analyse the environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of secondary school teachers. Factors affecting environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviour were also identified. Furthermore, the importance that teachers give to Environmental Education (Ε.Ε.) in their lessons was analyzed. This research involved the use of both quantitative and qualitative modes of inquiry. Two hundred questionnaire respondents took part in the research. Statistical and thematic analysis of the data obtained from the questionnaires was carried out respectively. Tri-angulation of data was also done. The analysis revealed that secondary school teachers have an overall good level of environmental knowledge, although lacking some details and they do have an overall positive attitude and behaviour towards the environment. A significant relationship be-tween the environmental attitudes and behaviour as well as the environmental knowledge and behaviour was identified. The implementation of E.E. by secondary school teachers was charac-terised by a strong influence of the curriculum. In addition, they also incorporate E.E. through pro-environmental behaviour, particularly concerning waste issues. The main restrictions that limit secondary school teachers from including E.E. are time constraints and the negative feedback they receive. With regards to the grounding offered to teachers related to E.E., secondary school teachers described the teacher training courses as being more theoretical rather than focusing on practical applications. In light of these findings, this research puts forward suggestions for a better structure of teacher training courses. This study aims at investigating secondary school students’ knowledge of and attitudes towards environment on different variables. The study was conducted with 300 secondary school teachers through the descriptive survey model. Environmental Knowledge Test and Environmental Attitude Scale were used to collect data for the study. The results showed that secondary school teachers’ knowledge of and attitudes towards environment did not differ on gender. Finally, some suggestions based on results were included in the study.