Education and environment (attitude, knowledge and environmental behavior of students)

Increased environmental problems make inevitable the requirement of changing attitudes, knowledge and behaviors of different social groups towards the environment. The main purpose of this survey is to examine the level of knowledge, attitudes and environmental behavior of high school students in SanandajCity (Kurdistan, Iran). The research applies survey method. The statistic sample of the survey includes 386 high school students. The samples have been selected by multistage cluster sampling method and the data was gathered by using questionnaire. The survey findings show that about 68 percent of the surveyed students reported environmentally friendly responsible behavior. In addition, findings show that student's environmental knowledge was scored very high and there was rare essential appointment to do environmental behavior. While about 55 percent of the students indicated positive environmental attitude, the remainder had shown to hold technological attitude. Among determinants, environmental attitude showed to have most effects on environmental behavior which means, it is the most powerful predictor of the environmental behavior. The results also show that there is a weak relationship between environmental knowledge and environmental behavior. To explain this gap, the possible reasons have been expressed and the paper ends up with some implication for education policy makers to promote environmentally responsible behaviors among students.