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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 95 – 100

5thWorld Conference Educational Sciences 2013 - WCES 2013

Students’ Conative Component about the Environment

In The Republic Of Macedonia

Murtezan Ismailia, Mile Srbinovskia*, & Zoran Sapuricb

a
SEEU, Institute for Environment and Health, Tetovo, 1200, The Republic of Macedonia
b
American coledge, Skopje, 1000, The Republic of Macedonia

Abstract

In this paper we tried to determine the level of students’ conative component about environment in the Republic of Macedonia.
1478 students from 38 primary and secondary schools were included in this research.
The most of the students have shown their willingness for active participation in the situations where their environment is
polluted.
The results of this scientific paper will contribute to more comprehensive explanation of the conditions which lead to positive
attitude of the student to the protection of the environment.

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Keywords: conative component, environmental education, students, primary schools, high school, Republic of Macedonia;

1. Introduction

Conative performances are acts of volition or will. Conation is the state of mind of having purpose, and conative
knowing is choosing or willing to perform in relation to some set of circumstances or state of affairs. It is a state of
knowing – to, as distinct from knowing – that or knowing how. Conative knowing is the state of willingness. But
when a person achieves a state of ‘knowing – how’, it includes all the instances of emotional, imaginable, physical,
physiological as well as linguistic knowing (Mohanty, A.).
One of the main goals of environmental education is to create a new behavior and lifestyle, which means that each
student will engage and act in accordance to the needs of the environment. Srbinovski M. (2005b) defined
environmental education as ”a process of active learning in which individuals and groups attain elementary
knowledge, understanding, and skills for decisive, motivated, responsible, and collective action to achieve and
maintain the dynamic environmental balance”. Evidently, the definition constitutes numerous elements which can
also be found in other sources (Stapp et al, 1969; IUCN, 1970; Belgrade Chapter, 1975; UNESCO, 1978; Lucas,
1980; Ramsey & Hungerford, 1989; Marcinkowski, Volk & Hungerford, 1990; NEEAC & US-EPA, 1996; IEEP

*
Corresponding Author name. Mile Srbinovski, Tel.: +389 44 356 114
E-mail address: m.srbinovski@seeu.edu.mk

1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.174
96 Murtezan Ismaili et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 95 – 100

itn.). Hence, the ultimate goal of environmentally responsible behavior from students can only be achieved if the
aforementioned elements are fully integrated in the curriculum.
The willingness of individuals to participate in an activity means "the sum of all his/her characteristics due to which
he/she will act in one way rather than another" (Dictionary of Pedagogy, 1967). This term includes physical,
psychological and moral components.

"Establishing a willing attitude to environmental protection does not depend only on the students' sense of
personality and situational circumstances understood in the narrow sense, but also depends on the society to which
man belongs, and which surrounds it" (Kundacina, 1991). Therefore, Furlan I. (1973/74) argues that "the
development of willing environmental awareness component is more difficult and complicated task than emotional
component, because it is difficult to provide students with positive reinforcement for their actions."
More authors deal with the students’ conative component in the field of environmental education: Abazi et al.
(2008, 2009a and 2009b), Charlesworth (1976), Enrajt & Saterfild (1985), and Matovic and Matic (1989), Zderic
(1983), Kritovac (1989), Radovic (1977), De Zan (1990), Kundacina (1991), Robotti & Hart (1995), Ismaili et al.
(2009a and 2009b), Hoody (1995), McVittie & Chamberlain (2000), Srbinovski (2000, 2001, 2003e, 2004a, 2004b,
2005a, 2005b and 2006), Arbuthnot, J. (1977), Barrett et al. (2002), Chan (1996), Erdogan et al. (2009), Hines et al.
(1986/87), Hsu (1997), Hungerford & Volk (1990), Kuhlemeier (1999), Marcinkowski & Mrazek (1996),
Marcinkowski (2001), McBeth (2006), McBeth et al. (2008), Palmer (1998), Sia (1985), Sia et al. (1985/86), Sivek
& Hungerford (1989/90), Jonuzi (2009) etc. Robotti & Hart (1995) believe that most researches efforts, neglect
historical, social and political aspects in which individuals and groups operate.

2. Methodology

The aim of this study is to determine the students’ readiness to engage in situations when their environment is
threatened. Readiness for action in protecting the environment is defined as the degree of individual’s willingness to
participate in the activities of the ecological character (Kundacina, 1991). It expresses the acceptance of possible
way of students’ engagement when their environment is contaminated.
These results represent willingness on the verbal level, which certainly can not be a complete indicator of the
individuals’ behavior in situations where their environment is in risk. From that, we have not examined the students’
behavior, but their attitudes. It is important to emphasize that what you say and what you do are two different things.
As reported by Brickman, Deutscher and Wicker (cited in Hines, Hungerford and Tomera, 1986), what people
indicate on a questionnaire is often inconsistent with their actual behaviors.
For the credibility of these studies Novosel, P. (1963) supposes, "When our respondents say that in a situation they
will act in a certain way, it still does not mean that it actually happened. It just means that in them there is a certain
degree of readiness to act in that way". Siber I. (1984) argues that this is only a "latent disposition of the action."
There is a base ground for assuming that majority of our students is willing for action in situation when their
environment is threatened. We have constructed the instrument Scale of activation (SA). Scores of this scale
represent different levels of students’ readiness to participate in the activities of environmental protection. On this
scale, responders chose one option that represents their readiness to participate in environment protection in certain
hypothetical situations. These situations are referred to the rehabilitation of negative states in the environment. 10
hypothetical situations were so formulated that it allows us direct measurement of the student’s readiness degree on
the four levels, without a middle category ("forced choice").
 Murtezan Ismaili et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 95 – 100 97

Table 1. Action's modalities (Kundacina, 1991).

No Modality/level of students’ readiness for action Points

A Indifferent attitude (students do not think about the situation) 1
B Passive-active attitude (students think, but not engage) 2
C Students do something on their own initiative- active attitude (take action) 3
D Collective attitude (take action and asks others to engage) 4

Metric characteristics of SA are given in the following tables.

Table 2. Metric characteristics of SA.

N. of. question 905 Minimum 10.00 Variance 30.465

Mean 26.426 Maximum 40.000 Skewness -0.939
Confid. – 95% 26.066 Lover quartile 24.000 S. E. Skewness 0.081
Confid. + 95% 26.785 Upper quartile 30.000 Kurtosis 1.469
Median 28.000 Std. deviation 5.520 S.E. Kurtosis. 0.162
Sum 23968 Standard Error 0.183 Miss. Cases 98.000

Thus we have got instruments with relatively good metric characteristics.

We included 1487 students from 38 primary and secondary schools in the Republic of Macedonia from 1999 to
2009. We decided to include final classes, because the students learn environmental issues in all grades, so these
students represent a kind of rounding of an educational level. From that, we can conclude that our sample is
intentional and systematic. It is intentional because we included final classes, and systematic because we chose each
n-th class. Because a range of coincidental moments influenced which students will be found in these classes, we
can consider that our sample is coincidental and representative enough.

3. Results and discussion

The students’ level of preparedness to engage in environmental protection is shown in the following table.

Table 3. Distribution of responses (by situations).

Hypothetical A B C D
Situation f % f % f % f %
1 152 10.66 289 12.13 376 26.37 608 42.64

2 93 6.74 222 16.09 396 28.7 667 48.33

3 195 13.57 432 30.06 349 24.29 458 31.87
4 98 7.34 209 15.64 374 27.99 651 48.73
5 132 10.36 444 34.85 286 22.45 407 31.95
6 132 9.81 307 22.81 329 24.44 572 42.5
7 120 10.84 315 28.46 276 24.93 389 25.14
8 426 30.06 363 25.62 254 17.93 366 25.83
9 192 13.38 514 35.82 263 18.33 457 31.85
10 144 10.11 314 22.04 356 24.98 601 42.18
Legend: A- Indifferent attitude, B - Passive-active attitude, C- takes action, D- Collective attitude
98 Murtezan Ismaili et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 95 – 100

On the basis of these results we can conclude that most students have a positive attitude towards their own
participation in environmental protection. Very important is the fact that about 2/3 of them are ready to engage in
environmental protection. Thus, we accept the hypothesis that students are substantially ready for engagement in
situations where the environment is in jeopardy.
The respondents have not equal attitudes towards offered situations. Their readiness for action depends on the kind
of the problems. They have shown more willingness to act in the school’s activities about environment. This could
mean that they consider themselves as competent authorities for implementation of the activities in the environment.
Indifferent attitude of students was reported in 12.8% of cases. This percentage indicates that their willingness for
action is lower than the needs of the society. This passive attitude of students is determined by large number of
factors from the social and school environment. Some of them influence positively and some negatively, which
leads to student’ disorientation. In this context, some previous studies have not confirmed the dominant position of
the school’s contribution in the field of environmental education (Kundacina 1991, Srbinovska 2001, Srbinovski,
2005b and 2003b). In our opinion, this is the result of a number of weaknesses that characterize the current
education system. In fact, many authors believe that our educational system is still too closed, uniform, slow,
overloaded with tradition, and not sensitive enough and ready for change
Kundacina (1990) found a statistically significant correlation between the willingness of young people to participate
in the environmental protection on the one hand, and environmental atmosphere in the family, urbanization of
residence, social status, financial status of the family, on the other hand. The same author believes that "the students’
activities are determined by a number of factors that can be divided into those who make the internal motivation and
those who do situational circumstances. Readiness for action is the product of the value’s orientation of the
individual and his feelings and beliefs in the need to engage".
Srbinovski M. (2005a, 2005b) on the representative sample of 2154 students found that the conative component is
on higher level among young students than the older ones. The same author found low correlation (0.16 and 0.21)
among cognitive and conative component (Srbinovski, 2005a, 2005b). This means that the conative component can
not be statistically significant develop only through this component. Kundačina (1991) confirmed that the conative
and other students’ environmental qualification are not statistically significant related. On the relationship between
cognitive and conative component indicate McVittie & Chamberlain (2000). Similar results were obtained by
Srbinovski (1997) with students in experimental classes in "J. Rade Korčagin" in Skopje and "Kiril Pejcinovic"-
Tetovo, high schools, (1996b). Stojanovic et al, (1997) found a positive relationship between studying of
environmental content and students' behavior toward nature.
The positive students’ attitude towards their own participation in environmental protection shows that they are
willing to learn the contents in the field of ecology. Unfortunately, content analysis of the curriculum and didactic
materials has shown that there are many weaknesses and gaps in terms of their quality and quantity (Srbinovski,
2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2003d and 2003). There are several reasons for this. One of them
is still not fully established right place of environment in the educational system.

4. Conclusion
Bearing in mind previous findings, as well as the average assessment level of students’ readiness for action (62 %),
we can conclude that the most of students are ready for action in the situation where their environment is threatened.
From that, we can partially confirm our hypothesis.
It is an indisputable fact that the younger generation aware of the importance of preserving the environment and they
are adequately prepared to protect it. On the other hand, they are motivated to successfully learn their own
environmental courses. However, at this level is not their educational system.
The need for harmonious action of the school and social factors is greater than ever. Social community must be
aware of the role of educational systems in the field of environmental protection. From that, in accordance to the
environmental goals and principles, we must permanently advancement our educational system, especially in the
field of environment and sustainable development. Just in this way, we could professionally and competently
 Murtezan Ismaili et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 95 – 100 99

respond to this social need, particularly as young people showed their awareness and readiness for active
involvement in situations when their environment is threatened. This conative attitude towards the environment
actually has to be one of the ultimate goals of environmental education. And he can only be achieved if the whole
society becomes a powerful educational community.

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