The importance of environmental education in students: analyzing the transition from middle to high school in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico

Abstract

Objective: A poll on first-semester high school students (n = 246) took place at NuevoLaredo, Tamaulipas, Mexico, to find out if they received environmental education as anextracurricular class during middle school and how this training could influence theirperceptions and positions on environmental issues.Design/methodology/approach: A questionnaire that contained aspects regard waterculture, recycling, species care and transportation, as well as general knowledge of theenvironment and its regulations, was applied to students. The SPSS statistical software wasused to categorize two groups: students who received extracurricular environmentaleducation and those who did not. Subsequently, the non-parametric Mann Whitney testswere performed on the data.Results: Out of the total number of participants, 167 said they had received extracurricularenvironmental education in middle school. The other 79 participants reported not to havedone so. Students who received more environmental education in middle school exhibit abetter attitude regard water management. Limitations of the study/implications: To interpret the results, it is necessary to considerthat the study took place only in the city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas and that aconvenience sampling was used.Findings / Conclusions: There are still students that do not receive enough environmentaleducation. We conclude that it is important to intensify efforts to change this situation, asenvironmental training has shown to positively influence the attitudes of students whoreceived it.