Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 12, Issue 2, Article 5 (Dec., 2011) Sibel OZSOY, Gokhan OZSOY and Hayriye Gul KURUYER Turkish pre-service primary school teachers’ environmental attitudes: Effects of gender and grade level Contents Next

Turkish pre-service primary school teachers' environmental attitudes: Effects of gender and grade level^*

 

Sibel OZSOY^#, Gokhan OZSOY and Hayriye Gul KURUYER

Department of Primary School Teacher Education, Aksaray University, 68100 Kampus Aksaray, TURKEY

^# Correspondence author E-mail: sozsoy@aksaray.edu.tr

Received 24 May, 2011
Revised 25 Dec., 2011

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Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Method
  • Research Design
  • Sample
  • Research Instruments
  • Procedure
  • Data Analysis
• Results
• Conclusion and discussion
• References

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore Turkish pre-service primary school teachers' attitudes towards environment. Besides, it aimed to investigate how pre-service primary school teachers' environmental attitudes change with grade level and gender. A total of 2067 pre-service teachers attending to primary school education departments of nine different universities in Turkey participated in the study. The results of the study showed that the pre-service primary school teachers have a high level of environmental attitudes (M = 152.62, SD = 13.18). The results also revealed that there is a statistically significant mean difference (t = 2.03, p = .04) between males and females in favor of females with a large effect size (η²= .99). The results also showed that there are no significant differences (F_(3,2063) = 1.676, p = .170) between pre-service teachers enrolling to different grades with respect to their environmental attitudes.

Keywords: pre-service primary school teachers, environmental education, attitudes toward environment, gender difference, grade level difference

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^* The study is presented as an oral presentation at 7th International Conference on Education (Samos, 2011).