Environmental literacy of 8thgrade students

Abstract

Philippine laws require environmental education to be integrated into basic
education curriculum as early as 1977. After four decades of implementation, a study was
made to assess the current ecological literacy among 8th-grade students in city and province of
Iloilo, Philippines and will provide a baseline data which is useful to design the appropriate
environmental education programs. The detailed results showed that there was a high level of
ecological literacy among respondents in their ecological knowledge, verbal commitment, real
commitment, and environmental sensitivity. While in the general environmental feelings it was
found out to have very high-level environmental literacy. Furthermore, a significant
relationship was found between school curriculum and residence location to ecological
knowledge, school curriculum and verbal commitment, sex and residence location to real
engagement, sex and school curriculum with environmental sensitivity, and school type to
environmental feelings. Likewise, indicators such as ecological knowledge, verbal
commitment, and general environmental perceptions were examined to have a moderate
degree, meager and inverses low degree of correlation respectively with academic performance
in science.