AN ANALYSIS OF PRE-SERVICE SCIENCE TEACHERS’ MORAL CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT ENVIRONMENT AND THEIR ATTITUDES TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT

Year 2017, Volume: 7 Issue: 1, 17 - 33, 31.01.2017

Gizem Alpak Tunç , Nilgün Yenice

Abstract

This study aims at analysing the moral considerations of pre-service science teachers about environment and their attitudes towards sustainable environment. It was carried out during the school year of 2014-2015 with 1438 pre-service science teachers attending public universities in the Aegean region of Turkey. The data of the study were collected using two tools: “the scale of ecocentric, anthropocentric and hostile attitudes towards environment” and “Sustainable Environmental Attitude Scale”. The data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics. In addition, in order to determine the correlation between participants’ scores in the scale of ecocentric, antropocentric and hostile attitudes towards environment and their scores in the sustainable environmental attitude scale the Sperman Brown rank order correlation analysis was employed. The findings showed that the participants had a ecocentric attitude and their attitudes towards sustainable environment was high. It was also found that when the scores of the participants in the scale of ecocentric, antropocentric and hostile attitudes towards environment increased, their scores in the sustainable environmental attitude scale increased. However, when their scores in the hostile attitude dimension increased, their scores in in the sustainable environmental attitude scale decreased. Based on the findings obtained several suggestions were developed in regard to future studies.

Keywords

Sustainable environmental, Environmental ethic, Environmental education