A quantitative investigation on recycling attitudes of gifted/talented students

Uncontrolled industrialization process since nineteenth century and the trend towards consumer society have resulted in an enormous amount of waste materials. As a result of this problem, management and safe removal of urban waste has become one of the most important environmental issues of today. Recycling projects that have been developed to solve this problem will reduce waste materials, recycle discarded materials and save energy, money and time. Therefore, recycling applications and related researches are significantly growing due to their enormous potential to solve many environmental problems of society. In this perspective, the aim of this study was to determine the recycling attitude levels of gifted/talented students. Also, gifted/talented students' recycling attitude levels was compared according to some independent variables, such as age, gender and grade. For these purposes, single scan model was performed in the present research. As a means of data collection, Recycling Attitude Scale (RAS) and the personal information form were used. The RAS was applied to 122 gifted students enrolling in Science and Art Center in Manisa Province of Turkey in 2012-2013 academic years. Gifted/talented students' ages ranged from 10 to 13 and, also, the 11-year-old candidates, who participated in the study, were majority. Statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS 17.00) programme was utilized to analyse the obtained data. The analysis results showed that gifted and talented students had fairly well recycling attitude level and there were no significant difference between gifted and talented students in terms of gender, age and class.