Future primary teachers’ knowledge and understanding of environmental quality issues – a questionnaire survey

This paper aims to investigate students’ awareness regarding the factors that affect the environmental quality in university classrooms. For this purpose a questionnaire survey was conducted, in which 314 undergraduate students of the School of Primary Education, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, participated. The questionnaire was developed for this survey and includes questions related to indoor thermal comfort (ITC) conditions and indoor air quality (IAQ). The analysis revealed that the vast majority of the students were aware that temperature and humidity are the two factors that mainly determine the ITC levels. In general, they are also aware that the ITC levels are affected by classroom’s and individual’s characteristics. The most accepted factors considered by the students to affect the IAQ were smoking (95%) and dust (90%), while the less accepted factors were furniture (17%), wallpapers (21%) and use of printer, photocopier (29%). The results underline the need to improve students’ knowledge about the factors that affect IEQ and that measures can be taken to improve it.