Teacher’s Climate Change Awareness level and mitigation of Perceived Health effects among secondary school students in Cross River State, Nigeria

Secondary school teacher’s level of climate change awareness can influence secondary school student’s response to mitigate the perceived health effects of climate change. This can be done through and during the process of teaching and learning. Various studies have shown that students learn more by imitating their teachers, hence if teacher’s level of climate change awareness is high, their students will learn from their them and this can bring about a change in attitude, thereby bringing about positive environmental behaviour among secondary school students. This research adopted the Ex-post facto research design; the study is located in secondary schools in Cross River State, Nigeria. A sample of 576 teachers from 18 public and private secondary schools (12 and 6 respectively) were assessed to examine their climate change awareness level and how they can influence the mitigation of perceived health effects of climate change among secondary schools students in Cross River State, Nigeria. The instrument was a 36 item structured questionnaire which was administered by the researchers and 5 trained research assistants. The instrument was coded and analyzed with Pearson product moment correlation analysis. The result showed a calculated value of 0.439, while the table value is .088, with 574 degree of freedom. The null hypothesis was rejected, while the alternate hypothesis was accepted; therefore, teachers’ climate change awareness level does significantly influence the mitigation of perceived health effects of climate change among secondary school students in Cross River State, Nigeria. It was recommended among others that environmental clubs should be established in all secondary schools in the state, while government and other stakeholders should assist secondary schools with information and communication materials on all aspects of environmental awareness especially climate change awareness.