Determining pre-service teachers' awareness of sustainable development and levels of environmentally friendly behavior

Abstract

Meaningfully revealing teacher candidates' awareness of sustainability and their behavior levels through statistics is important for achieving the goals of education for sustainable development. The purpose of this research is to determine teacher candidates' awareness of sustainable development and their levels of environmentally friendly behavior and to identify which factors have a meaningful effect on their awareness levels and environmental behavior. Using the survey method from quantitative research approaches, the study was conducted with 528 teacher candidates studying at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University Faculty of Education. The "Personal Information Form," "Sustainable Development Awareness Scale," and "Environmentally Friendly Behaviors Scale" were used as data collection tools in the study. Teacher candidates' processes of embracing sustainability and behaving accordingly may be influenced by various factors in their personal lives. Thus, the study examined individuals' awareness of sustainable development and environmentally friendly behaviors in terms of various factors such as taking a course on the subject, participating in an activity, or joining a club. The data obtained as a result of the research were transferred to the SPSS 2024 software package, and the necessary analyses were performed. The analysis of the research data revealed statistically significant differences in the general and dimension-related environmentally friendly behavior scores of teacher candidates in terms of their gender, participation in activities, taking courses, knowledge of ecological footprint, knowledge of zero waste, and knowledge of global warming. When examining the teacher candidates' general and dimension-related sustainable development awareness scores in terms of their gender, their field of study, the type of high school they graduated from, their knowledge of zero waste, their knowledge of global warming, their knowledge of ecological footprint, and their course enrollment status, statistically significant differences were found.