Measuring grade 10 students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes of sustainable development
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Abstract
In Lebanon, since 1990, successive Governments have stressed the priority of education and the development of its potentials to enable it to contribute to sustainable human development. However, these approaches were never evaluated by standardized measures that might monitor evidence of changes in the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors among students concerning sustainable development. This study has two main objectives: (a) to establish a baseline on the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of Lebanese tenth grade students towards sustainable development, b) to assess the impact of type of school, gender, presence of environmental club in school, and being a member in the environmental club in school on the levels of Knowledge, attitudes and Skills of Sustainable Development. The study was conducted in 20 schools in administrative Beirut region (12 private and 8 public). The sample consisted of 437 students who completed a developed questionnaire that included items involving all sustainable development pillars: social, environmental and economic. Results showed that students’ SD knowledge, attitudes, and skills were relatively high where the average mean of students’ answers on items concerning social pillar was greater than that of the environmental pillar which in turn was greater than that of the economic pillar. Environmental club membership manifestly promoted SD knowledge, skills and attitudes. Gender influence was conspicuous in the results of SD attitudes and skills where female students exceled over male students. The Lebanese government should affirm its commitment by: adopting policies and strategies on SD to put more focus on the role of Education for sustainable development, Ensuring efficient integration of SD into curriculum, establishing SD clubs and encouraging students’ enrollment into it.
Keywords: Sustainability, education for sustainable development, knowledge, attitude, skills, environmental club.
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