Environmental Literacy of Junior Secondary Students in Sri Lanka

Human development without considering the impact on the environment has created numerous global issues, prompting policymakers to prioritize environmental protection. As environmental issues became pressing concerns, the importance of environmental literacy among citizens has gained recognition. Environmental literacy embodies a multifaceted understanding, awareness, and active engagement of addressing environmental challenges, encompassing knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivation, and responsibility towards fostering ecological balance, sustainable development, social justice, and nurturing environmentally conscious citizens and communities. A study was conducted to identify the environmental literacy skills of junior secondary students in Sri Lanka. A pragmatic, deductive, quantitative survey design was followed, and a sample of 816 students was selected using the stratified random sampling method. The Middle School Environmental Literacy Survey (MSELS) instrument was adopted for data collection. The study revealed that junior secondary students exhibit a low level of environmental literacy at 39.7%, with medium scores observed for ecological knowledge (61.5%) and issue identification (59.8%), and notably lower scores for other skills such as action planning (38%), verbal and actual commitment (37.6%), environmental sensitivity and feeling (25.2%), and problem-solving and prediction (15.3%). These findings highlight the imperative for Sri Lankan junior secondary curricula to prioritize environmental literacy skills and adopt a more practical approach to teaching and learning. Modifications to pedagogical strategies are essential to enhance proficiency across all the areas of environmental literacy. Keywords: environmental literacy; junior secondary students; environmental issues