University Students' Perception on Sustainable Development: A Case Study from Turkey

Tuncer G.

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH IN GEOGRAPHICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION, cilt.17, sa.3, ss.212-226, 2008 (ESCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 17 Sayı: 3
  • Basım Tarihi: 2008
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1080/10382040802168297
  • Dergi Adı: INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH IN GEOGRAPHICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.212-226
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: changing life styles, education for sustainable development, environmental education, sustainable university, Turkey, university students, ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

How can universities realise their powerful role in dealing with issues of environmental degradation, education for sustainability and changing life styles? Being a developing country and having young people amounting to one-third of the total population, it is a very important challenge to help especially the young in Turkey to recognise the social, economic and cultural dimensions of the environment in order to achieve a sustainable future. Thus, this study aims at investigating university students' perceptions of sustainable development and changing life styles and examines the effect of gender and enrolment on environment-related courses. A total of 823 students from three faculties of Middle East Technical University (Ankara) participated in the study. Data were obtained by administration of a modified version of Environmental Attitude Scale and analysed by two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The results revealed that while there was a statistically significant mean difference between boys and girls with respect to perception on sustainable development, there was no statistically significant mean difference between students who enrolled in an environment-related course and those who did not.