Exploring the Relationship between Gender-based Environmental Faith-commitment, Academic program, and Religious Attitudes from a Sample of College Students

Abstract

Catholic education shares in the evangelizing mission of the Church. This is done through the faith formation of young students. The Framework for Student Faith Formation in Catholic Schools sees the need for faith to dialogue with life issues like ecology. Current literature on ecology is mostly concerned with developmental issues in macro levels. Religious communities are only beginning to make sense of the impact of ecological crises lately. In the country, there is a need to bring ecological discussions that account for college-level appreciation of the environment concerning faith. The present study wants to know if gender preference, religious affiliation, and academic program may differ in terms of perceived faith -commitments towards the environment among selected college students in central Luzon. Secondly, it wants to know how gender responses, religious affiliation, and college academic programs may differ in terms of their religious attitudes. This descriptive quantitative survey will have college students selected through random sampling from the College of Arts and Sciences and Education, Computer Science, Business Administration, Nursing, Engineering and Architecture. To analyze data, ANOVA will be done to know how the informants may differ in their perceived faith-inspired environmental responses and religious attitudes based on their gender, religious affiliation, and academic strand. The results offer insights into the characteristics of college students' perceptions of faith to the environment. Further, the implications of the results are discussed concerning current efforts of the school to adopt gender and ecologically-sensitive academic programs.