Investigation of pre-service teachers' environmental ethics awareness and attitudes towards sustainable environment

Abstract

The aim of this study was to determine the environmental ethics awareness and sustainable environmental attitudes of pre-service teachers to reveal the teachers’ access to the content specified in undergraduate education. In the study, the correlational research design was used to determine the extent to which pre-service teachers’ environmental ethics awareness predicts their sustainable environmental attitudes. The sample of the study was comprised of 312 pre-service teachers attending a Faculty of Education in the Marmara Region in the spring term of the 2021-2022 academic year. In the study, a personal information form, the “Environmental Ethics Awareness Scale” consisting of 23 items, and the “Sustainable Environmental Attitude Scale” consisting of 27 items were used as data collection tools. In the analysis of the collected data, difference, correlation, and regression analyses were used together with descriptive analyses in line with the purpose and sub-purposes of the study. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the pre-service teachers’ environmental ethics awareness was very high, and sustainable environmental attitudes were high. The environmental ethics awareness of the pre-service teachers was found to vary significantly depending on gender in favor of the female pre-service teachers, while their sustainable environmental attitudes were found to not vary significantly depending on gender. In addition, the pre-service teachers’ environmental ethics awareness and sustainable environmental attitudes did not differ significantly depending on the department attended, grade level, taking/having taken environment and ethics courses, and relationship with environmental organizations. It was determined that there is a weak, positive, and significant correlation between the pre-service teachers’ environmental ethics awareness and sustainable environmental attitudes and that their environmental ethics awareness predicts their sustainable environmental attitudes at a weak level.