Open Journal of Applied Sciences, 2013, 3, 28-34 doi:10.4236/ojapps.2013.31004 Published Online March 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojapps) Exploring Greek High School Students’ Understanding of Basic Environmental Issues Christos A. Tsekos 1 , Aikaterini Plakitsi 2 , Dimosthenis G. Theocharopoulos 1 , Demetrios P. Matthopoulos 1 1 Department of Environmental and Natural Resources Management, School of Natural Resources and Enterprises Management, University of Western Greece, Agrinio, Greece 2 Department of Early Childhood Education, School of Education, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece Email: ca.tsekos@yahoo.gr, kplakits@cc.uoi.gr, dtheoh@cc.uoi.gr, dmatthop@cc.uoi.gr Received November 22, 2012; revised December 23, 2012; accepted January 1, 2013 ABSTRACT The present research studies the knowledge of 221 Ioannina’s city, located in the northwestern region of Greece, high school students on 10 environmental issues. Schoolers’ responses were collected through a “closed response” question- naire distributed at three of the city’s Public High Schools. The overall picture appeared to be moderately satisfactory, as high schoolers possess a good knowledge on several environmental issues, while misconceptions on other issues, such as sustainable development, predominate. Taking into account the outcome of the present study we consider that improvements are needed in the existing Environmental Education Program in order to ameliorate their knowledge. Keywords: Children’s Ideas; Misconceptions; Environmental Issues; Constructivism; Environmental Education 1. Introduction Pupils joining formal education system have already de- veloped notions and intellectual experiences on both natural and anthropogenic environment. These notions, the so-called alternative ideas, preconceptions, spontane- ous concepts and misconceptions [1-4] have been devel- oped through various types of human socialization, such as family, school, mass media etc., in connection with the different meanings and phenomena. Among the different learning theories, constructivism underlines pupils’ stimulation by their teachers as far as alternative ideas are concerned. Constructivism’s basic principle is that a pupil does not come to school as tabula rasa; on the contrary, knowledge is constructed based on someone’s previous experiences [5,6]. Ausubel et al. [7] and Posner et al. [8] pointed out that according to Con- structivism teachers should re-construct pupils’ knowl- edge based on their initial ideas instead of ignoring them. The North American Association for Environmental Edu- cation recommends pupils’ stimulation with regard to their alternative ideas through Environmental Education [9]. Although several studies were carried out in Greece in relation to primary, middle and high schoolers’ ideas on individual environmental issues, such as air pollution, mountain regions and others [10-14], studies aiming to investigate pupils’ knowledge on environmental issues as a whole are relatively limited. Such a study exploring the broader knowledge is the one of Kastani et al. [13]. Fur- thermore a new emerging paradigm is being addressed by Plakitsi et al. [14] concerning a holistic cultural his- torical approach in science and environmental educa- tion. Taking into account that environmental issues are in- terdependent, an attempt on evaluating the total-general knowledge of schoolers on these issues appears to be use- ful. 2. Methodology In the present study a closed response questionnaire with 10 questions was used. The contained questions are listed as an Annex at the end of the present article. Worth men- tioning is that during the interviews at Schools, the schoolers were informed, by members of the research team and their school teachers’, for the purposes of this survey, as well as that completing the questionnaire is anonymous and voluntary. 221 schoolers from three High Schools of the city of Ioannina in North western Greece participated in the study. The schools are public and operate in urban areas. 77 of the participated schoolers followed first-class (34.84%), 73 followed second-class (33.03%) and 71 followed third-class courses (32.13%). The analysis of the results was carried out with the Copyright © 2013 SciRes. OJAppS