Environmental literacy of pupils and its investigation in the Czech Republic

knowledge, attitudes, sensitivity and behaviour. In this text we
present a pilot study of a research tool focused on measuring the
environmental literacy of ISCED 2 pupils. Through the study we
measured the relationship between environmental literacy and
selected variables (gender, grade and leisure activities). The
target group consisted of pupils in the 6th to 9th grades of lower
secondary schools, and the total number of respondents was
467. The inner consistency (Cronbach´s α) of all tool scales
(knowledge, attitudes, sensitivity, behaviour) reached
acceptable values in the range of .71–.79. Spearman’s
correlation showed a statistically significant relationship mainly
among the scales of attitudes, sensitivity and behaviour.
Significant correlation coefficient values ranged from < .44 to
.65 >. Significant differences appeared between boys and girls in
regard to attitudes, sensitivity and behaviour scales, where girls
reached higher scores. Girls showed more pro-environmental
attitudes, sensitivity and behaviour than boys. It was also found
that the pupils' environmental knowledge increases with age.
However, this does not apply to the scales of attitudes, sensitivity
and behaviour. There was a high correlation between
environmental literacy (excluding knowledge) and the leisure
activities of pupils (outdoor activities, ICT, hobbies and sport).
Leisure activities in combination with age can be considered
essential determinants of environmental literacy, e.g. they
predict 33% of the variability in the sensitivity scale.