Who Cares? Attitudes of High School Students From Various Countries Towards Global and Domestic Environmental Issues

This study focused on attitudes of 16 year-old students from six countries towards environmental issues on domestic and global scales. Male and female students from China, Guinea, Japan, Malaysia, Ukraine and Vietnam expressed their level of concern about the following in regard to their country and the world: (a) air quality, (b) drinking water quality, (c) pollution caused by atomic power plants, (d) clearing of forests, (e) extinction of plants and animals, (f) climate change and (g) global disaster. This research focused on gender and cultural variability and invariance under diverse conditions of students’ backgrounds. The most pronounced intercultural regularity found was the prioritization of certain issues. In all countries, both genders showed similar priorities when assessing global and domestic environmental issues. The differences were mainly in the level of anxiety expressed towards environmental problems. While in some countries the level of concern expressed by girls was higher than that of boys, there was no such pattern across all cultures. Only in Japan were the ratings given by boys higher when comparing to those of girls. Another intercultural regularity was that the level of concern about the world’s environmental problems listed above is higher for both genders than about own country with exceptions of specific pressing national problems

Parents’ perceptions on previous and current science education system in Japan

Parents’ views, beliefs, and experiences greatly affect children’s attitudes toward education. The research aimed to identify the parents’ perception in the past, present, and their desired priorities in science education as well as investigated the adolescents’ perceptions based on gender and academic performance on science. As a survey study, this research relied on a questionnaire as the primary method of data collection which the data gained then was analysed by using statistical descriptive (percentage). The results showed that the priorities in education have shifted toward physics and chemistry in recent decades. Moreover, biology and earth science were found to be perceived as ‘easy’ and ‘secondary’ areas in comparison to the ‘superior’ ones (physics and chemistry). This has been strengthened by the critical situation for earth science, as the education system of Japan often does not al low the students to select it. Thus, the parents wished for a more balanced system. There was a difference in adolescents’ perceptions of science areas based on gender and academic performance. Physics and chemistry were associated with boys and top performers, while biology and earth science were supposed to ‘fit’ girls and low performers