Evaluating the Environmental Knowledge and the Effect of Environmental Education in Rural Schools of Chegeni City, Lorestan, Iran

Evaluating the knowledge of students about the environment and studying the effect of environmental education especially in rural areas is essential. The present study was carried out in order to evaluate the environmental knowledge and the effect of environmental eucation in rural schools of Chegeni city, Lorestan, Iran. For this purpose, seven high schools were randomly selected from Chegeni city, Lorestan located in forest areas and 1000 students were trained via lectures, posters and educational films about natural resources. Among them, 300 individuals were randomly selected based on a Cochran formula to fill out the questionnaire as a statistical sample to study their view before and after training. To collect the required data, a questionnaire was developed and its validity and reliability was confirmed through the expert comments and primary test. The alpha cronbach coefficient was obtained 0.8, 0.9, 0.8, 0.7 and 0.8 for environmental behavior, knowledge, recognition and education, respectively. Different grades, average score, household income and parents' education level had no significant effect on awareness, attitude and their attitude, as well. There was a significant and positive relationship between environmental knowledge with environmental understanding (0.639), environmental attitude (0.569) and education variables (0.479) (p≤0.01). Moreover, the significant and positive relationship was observed between the variables of knowledge and environmental behavior (0.320) (p≤0.01). It can be concluded that education had an effective role in attitude and responsible behavior of the students towards the environment. Regarding the small role of promotion in improving environmental attitudes and behaviors of students in threatened natural resources of rural areas, it can be suggested that authorities should consider the environmental education and promotion especially in such areas.