Abstract:

The environmental attitudes are one of the important predictors of the responsible environmental behavior, therefore it is appropriate to focus on them during educational research. The paper deals with the pupils of the secondary school (ISCED 2) from the Czech Republic and Australia and their leisure and environmental attitudes. The design of the research is quantitative, using a questionnaire containing 2-MEV scale (Johnson & Manoli, 2011). The 15 item scale focuses on the Model of 2 Major Environmental Values (Bogner et al. 2015) and is perfectly usable for pupils of the secondary school. The second part of the questionnaire contains items focused on leisure of the pupils and their socio-demographical background (age, gender, etc.). The respondents (N = 159) were from two Czech cities (Praha, Slaný) and from Sydney. Their age varied from 10 - 15 years. The data were collected in person by last of the authors. The Australian pupils achieved more pro-environmental results, but the this difference was not statistically significant. That is quite interesting result, because of the history and present of environmental education as well as the contact with the nature are very different in both countries. From the other observed variables, the most important was environmentally oriented leisure. The pupils with biologically or environmentally oriented leisure activities achieved significantly more pro-environmental (higher) results than pupils with other types of activities. The other variables such as age, gender or number of siblings were found not significant, therefore are discussed only briefly. .

Keywords:

Environmental education, environmental attitudes, ISCED 2, international comparison.