The sense of crisis on seriousness of earth environment is gradually getting greater and the importance of environment education followed by this trend is being highlighted. As an environment friendly New Environmental Paradigm opposed to the human Dominant Social Paradigm on the existing environment is on the rise, the environment education considers not only the perceptive field, but the definitive field and behavioral pattern to follow as important values. Accordingly, the basic awareness of students on environment was found out in order to perform a proper environment education and tried to find out the behavior pattern that the students have on environment on this basis .
For the research tool of this study, the one that has revised the Revised NEP Scale for elementary school students which Geum, Ji Hun․Kim, Jin Mo have validated the feasibility and reliability while the test paper was prepared by dividing into recycling behavior, energy preservation behavior and source of information. The target of this study was 600 students in sixth grade of elementary school residing in Kimhae, Gyeongsangnamdo while the mean, average, standard deviation, independent t-test and correlation analysis were performed using SPSS 15.0 statistics program for a total of 462 copies including 235 copies from male students and 227 copies from female students.
The results of this study are as follows.
First, everyone had high pro-NEP tendencies on the environmental problem with 4.14. On the other hand, the anti-NEP did not have high awareness standard with 2.98.
Second, the awareness level on resource recycling was shown as being quite high with 4.05. Between NEP and resource recycling, a positive correlation of r=.155 was shown so that the awareness level on resource recycling was getting quite high as the awareness on environment problem was getting higher.
Third, the awareness level on energy saving activity was shown as being very high with 3.0. Between NEP and resource recycling, a positive correlation of r=.210 so that the awareness level on energy saving was getting quite high as the awareness on environment problem was getting higher.
Fourth, for the source of information on environmental problems of region, our country and global village, the television and internet were shown as main sources of information while the ratio of positive answers on teachers and region as sources of information was shown as quite low.