A Sustainable Life: A Study on the Recycling Attitudes of Secondary School Students

The aim of the study is to examine and determine the thoughts of recycling of the situations (gender, grade level, educational status of parents) that affect the recycling attitudes of secondary school students. Explanatory design has been preferred among the mixed method research designs in which both quantitative and qualitative approaches are used together in the research. The study group of the quantitative part of the research consists of 700 students studying in secondary schools and the study group of the qualitative part consists of 30 students identified as selected. The data of the research were obtained with the “Recycling Scale” and “Image Form”. In order to compare the scale scores related to gender variable, Whitney U Test was used; in order to compare the scale scores related to grade level, maternal education and paternal education status variables, Kruskal Wallis Test was used. The qualitative data obtained from the students’ drawings were analyzed by content analysis. According to the results obtained from the research, students’ attitudes towards recycling are high in a positive way; it has been determined that there is no difference according to gender and education level of their mothers. It has been determined that there is a difference in the attitudes of the students towards recycling according to the grade level and educational status of their fathers. It is seen that students include elements such as people, trees, garbage, factory, cloud and garbage boxes in the paintings related to recycling. In this context, it can be said that student perceptions about recycling include recycling components.