Effects of environmental education in public administration department among students: example from Harran University

Increasing environmental problems and consumer society require individuals with higher levels of awareness in the issue of environment and more sensitive for the environment and make us face the requirement of changes in attitudes and behaviors. This requirement makes the environmental training and issue. Preventing unnecessary consumption, raising the levels of awareness for environmental issues in individuals and the society and most important of all, quitting the behavioral patterns that are currently harming the environment can be possible only with training about the environment. Beyond informing the society about the environment, the basic objective of training on environment is to transform the society through providing it with environmentalist attitudes and behaviors. The objective of our study starting from this sensitivity of an environmentalist training is to measure to what level the sensitivity and behaviors of students for the environment have been influenced from courses with contents on the environment given in Harran University Economic and Administrative Sciences Faculty, Public Administration Department. In the study, a survey was implemented through probing, which is the most common method for direct comprehensive observation. Simple random sampling technique was used in the survey through probing. Measurement of the following were attempted in the survey analysis: a) sensitivity of students in environmental issues, and b) changes in their behavioral patterns following the environmental training. The survey was applied to two different student groups. The first group consisted of first year students who have not taken the courses on the environment yet, while the second group consisted of the fourth year who had taken the courses on the environment. The comparison between these two groups will give us the required results. “The Environmental Attitude Scale”, which had been used in numerous academic studies previously, was used in the survey analysis to measure the environmentalist attitudes and behaviors. The Environmental Attitude Scale consists of two sections. The twelve statements in the first section have been prepared based on the anthropocentric and environment-centric points of view, which are the two basic points of view in environmental training and targets the measurement of environmental sensitivity of the students. The twelve behavioral patterns included in the second section, however, how environmentalist behaviors students display in their daily lives. Considering the results of items included in the first section of