Science Gifted and Non-Gifted Students’ Views about Global Warming: Willingness and Belief to Act

The purpose of this study was to investigate and compare science-gifted and non-gifted students’ views about how useful various specific actions related to reducing global warming might be, their willingness to undertake these various actions, their beliefs about the usefulness of actions, and the consistency between the believed usefulness of action and willingness to act. The instrument, which consists of 16 pro-environmental actions, was administerd to science-gifted (n=46) and non-gifted (n=194) students. The results of this study were as follows: In terms of students’ willingness to act, the commonly most acceptable pro-environmental actions were ‘less electricity in homes’ and ‘recycle things more’. In terms of students’ believed usefulness of action, the commonly most acceptable pro-environmental actions were ‘plants more trees’, ‘less electricity in homes’, ‘recycle things more’, and ‘use cars less’. The consistency between willingness to take action and beliefs in the action has shown to be similar pattern between gifted and non-gifted students in science. However, the degree of willingness to act was shown to be stronger among gifted students than non-gifted students in most of specific actions to reducing global warming.