15 and 16 Years-Old Students’ Understanding of Factors That Influence Water Pollution

Considering current environment condition, we should finally pay much more attention to environmental education. One of the methods, which would contribute to better environmental education, is of course including more environmental content to secondary school curriculum. Based on this, we would be able to expect the student’s knowledge of water pollution factors to improve. 281 of first and second year students of health care school, nursing care program, participated in this research. Data were collected by analyzing test papers about water pollution factors. We have also made knowledge comparison about water pollution factors between 15 (first year of secondary school) and 16 year (second year of secondary school) old students. The results indicated that second year students achieved statistically significantly better results than first year students at the water pollution test paper. The difference results in the fact that second year students have already listened to the content of environmental pollution, which first year students had yet to hear. Results also show that first and second year students were more successful at answering general questions, which do not demand much of detailed environmental knowledge.