ABSTRACT
Environmental Education is understood as the processes through which men
and the society build social values, knowledge, skills, attitudes and
competencies for the conservation of the environment. Based on the inclusion of
environmental education into the educational process, the construction of
values, attitudes, skills, and competencies are built so that the individual
can act proactively in protecting the environment. Values and attitudes, in that sense, are the psychological constructs mentioned
by the literature as predictors of behavior. Based on that, this research aims
to answer the following research problem: what is the relationship between the
perception of Environmental Education and the environmentally responsible
values, attitudes and behaviors of individuals in a Federal Public Institution
of Education (FPIE)? Accordingly, this paper seeks to examine the relationship
between those psychological constructs and the Environmental Education of
students and civil servants of an FPIE through an electronic questionnaire
applied to students and workers of the institution. The data analysis was done
by using descriptive statistics, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis,
structural equation modeling technique, t tests for independent samples, variance
analysis, and regression trees. The survey results point to a meaningful
correlation between the perception of Environmental Education and most
dimensions of the constructs of environmentally responsible values, attitudes, and behaviors. The same results also show consistency
between the factor analyses, presenting engagement between the literature and
what is intend to be discussed. Those results contribute to understand the
behavior considered as environmentally responsible of individuals from a Federal
Public Institution of Education, before their perception regarding
Environmental Education. In this study, significant relationships among values,
attitudes, and behaviors have also been found. Based on the results presented
in this survey, one can devise strategies for academics, research, outreaching,
empowerment, and awareness of future technicians, graduates, and technologists
as well as other stakeholders involved with environmental issues. Thus, this
study contributes to the surveyed institution in the sense that, based on it,
goals and strategies towards the empowerment in education and environmental
management can be traced, highlighting themes that address waste management,
sustainable biddings, labor life quality, raise of students’ awareness,
empowerment of the civil servants, and rational use of resources. The study
helps to identify what the environmentally responsible values, attitudes, and
behaviors are in an academic environment, serving as a starting point for
developing tools that enable the understanding of those constructs in the
context of other institutions. Among the factors that influence the ecological
behavior of individuals, gender is the most important variable as a predictor
of a general ecological behavior.
Keywords: Environmental Education.
Environmentally responsible values, attitudes, and
behaviors. Factor
analysis. Structural model. Regression tree.