Relationship Between Awareness, Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Environmental Education Among Secondary School Students in Malaysia

The importance of environmental education (EE) is well known globally among societies. Environmental education is gradually promoted as a sustainable tool in protection of the environment Environmental education is found across school curriculums in Malaysia. The objectives of the curriculum are environmental attitude, knowledge and awareness (AKA) where has been investigated in the current study. The study was conducted to identify the relationship between environmental awareness, knowledge and attitude among secondary school students. The survey was conducted on 470 respondents who were in Form Four (16 years old) in Kajang city, Selangor, Malaysia. An instrument which included (48 questions) was employed to investigate the relationship between awareness, knowledge and attitude. The results of Person Correlation showed a significant but weak relationship between awareness and knowledge on environmental issues while there was high relationship observed between awareness and attitudes among respondents. Moreover, the statistical test showed a negligible relationship between knowledge and attitude among students about environment. The study concluded that a high level of awareness and knowledge plus positive attitude of students may come have been achieved from the families of respondents, teachers, media, private reading and school curriculums regarding the environment that increases the environmental view among students as well as overall in the society. The study recommended that environmental education subject necessarily might be considered as an independent syllabus in Malaysian education system.