- Email: [email protected]
An Assessment of Pre-service Teachers’ Attitudes toward Books on Environment and, Relationship between Attitudes and Environmental Behaviours; Environmental Thinking
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 4357 – 4361
5th World Conference on Educational Sciences - WCES 2013
An assessment of pre-service teachers' attitudes toward books on environment and, relationship between attitudes and environmental behaviours; environmental thinking Çetin Tan * Siirt University, Faculty Of Education, 56100, Siirt, Turkey
Abstract Environmental education is of great importance in the prevention of environmental issues and creating a healthy environment For this reason, the factors that play a role in the formation of primary school teachers' attitudes toward the environment need to be studied in depth. In this study, primary school teachers' attitudes towards reading books on environmental issues and their environmental behaviors and thinking have been investigated. The "Environmental Attitude Scale" developed by Uzun ve Sağlam (2006) and "Attitudes towards reading books on environmental issues” developed by Kahyaoğlu (2010) scale were used. 16:00 SPSS packet program was utilized to analyze the data. In this study, teachers' attitudes towards reading books are analyzed in light of the three variables: (i) programs or majors they are attending, (ii) gender and (iii) types of high schools they have graduated. The results show that student teachers' attitudes towards reading books on environmental issues show significant variances across gender and the program type, but no significant variance was found in relation to type of high school. © 2013 Theand Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection peer review under the responsibility of Prof. Dr. Servet Bayram Selection and/or peer-review under World Education and Research Center. © 2013 The Authors Published by responsibility Elsevier Ltd. of AllAcademic rights reserved Keywords: Environmental education, attitude towards environment, reading books, pre-service teachers
1. Introduction In our age, socio-economic, scientific and technological developments have dramatically altered both individuals’ daily habits and the environmental conditions. The changes have particularly been at an unprecented rate in that natural events become inseparable from people’s daily routine activities related to their interaction with biosphere. We can claim that environmental problems, whether deliberate or by an oversight, have paved the way for substantial, accumulative environmental damages at a global scale. Damages as a result of human impact on the environment at first largely went unnoticed due to the nature’s ability to renew itself. However, there is a consensus that threshold for environment to sustain and renew itself in time had repeatedly been passed, so public opinion, beginning in 1970s, spearheaded by experts who were discontent with changes in environment, turned attention to understanding and solving environmental problems. As a result, people started to become curious and take action toward solving the issues affecting them in their immediate sorroundings (Keleş & Hamamcı, 1997; Dilek, 2008). In other words, the universality of the understanding of the global environmental problems caused by human impact has brought about environmental conciousness. Previously simply seen as water and air pollution and toxic
* Çetin TAN. E-mail address: [email protected]
1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.946
4358
Çetin Tan / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 4357 – 4361
waste, environmental problems become dire threats with the thinning of ozone layer, global climate change and the extinction of biological diversity. Human impact is the main source of environmental problems while humans are also the answer to solving these problems (Bradley, Waliczek ve Zajicek, 1999). Changes in environmental behavior also go hand in hand with knowledge, attitudes changes. In this context, environmental education must be considered as the most effective way to solve these problems (Erten, 2003; Uzun & Sağlam, 2006). The need for environmental education for the betterment of humans is more urgen than ever in that damages to environmental would have a detrimental effect on people’s daily life. For this reason, environmental education should have a prominent place in school curriculum (Ilgar, 2007). By creating an environmental awareness for an individual or society as a whole, solutions to environmental problems could be solved (Erantay & Erdoğan, 2009). There are many definitions of environmental education. Atasoy (2006) defines environmental education’s mission as educating citizens who are aware of these issues with sensitivity and interest in local, regional, national, and global problems. Erten (2004) views environmental education for the protection of the environment attitudes, values, knowledge and skills development, eco-friendly behaviors. Moseley (2000) defines environmental education as a life-long interdisciplinary approach contributing to the solution of current environmental problems, with the goal of creating a world population who is responsible for the things they have done to the environment. When all definitions are taken together, on the one hand with environmental education environmental awareness is thought to be important, which aims encouage people to be actively participate in the solution of problems as responsible individuals (Özdemir, 2007). In this process, the attitudes of individuals come to the fore. Because attitude is one of the most important determinants of human behaviors. Individuals' attitudes, love, hatred for each other significantly affect the behavior of them (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1999, Morgan, 1991). Attitudes have important important feature: they last long period of time. They include cognitive, emotional and behavioral forms. In this regard, measurement of attitudes and the extent of them situation are desirable in many areas of scientific studies (Erkuş, 2003). Attitudes give direction to the individual's behavior that can lead to bias in the decision making process (Ülgen, 1994). There are many factors that play a role in the formation of attitudes (Susar Kırmızı, 2012: 2356). This study aims to evaluate pre-service teachers' attitudes towards reading books on the environment and the relationship between environmental behavior and thinking. In light of the findings, this study is thought to have contributed to the environmental education and its place in education. 2. Method 2.1. Participants The study was conducted at Siirt University in Turkey. Participants were 293 prospective teachers who were attending at elementary department in faculty of education. 2.2. Data collection “Attitudes toward reading environmental books” was used and administered top re-service teachers as data data collection instrument developed by Kahyaoğlu (2011). The scale for the instrument is 5 type Likert Scale consisting of 20 items. Reliability for the scale is .87 while the cronbach alpha reliability is .93. The Likert 5 type “Environmental Attitudes” scale developed by Uzun and Sağlam (2006) was used to investigate environmental attitudes (13 items) and environmental thinking (14 items). This scale’s cronbach alpha reliability is .89 and environmental thinking is .79.
4359
Çetin Tan / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 4357 – 4361
2.3. Data analysis Mean, standard deviation and t-test analysis were conducted to determine preservice teachers’ attitudes toward reading environment books, their environmental attitudes and environmental thinking. To determine the correlation between attitudes toward reading books and environmental thinking, Pearson correlation coefficient was utilized for the study. 3. Findings The data for relationship between preservice teachers’ environmental attitudes, environmental thinking and attitudes toward reading books are presented below: Table-1. The descriptive statistics for pre-service teachers' attitudes towards reading books related to the environment and environmental behaviour and thinking
Attitudes toward reading books on environment Environmental behavior Environmental thinking
N 293 293 293
Χ
2.13 3.05 3.80
SD .732 .768 .598
As can be seen in Table 1, the mean for preservice teachers’ attitudes toward books is 2.13 and Standard deviation is .732, the mean for environmental behaviour is 3.05; the mean for environmental thinking is 3.80 and Standard deviation is .598. İt could be said that preservice teachers’ attitudes toward books are low, whereas their environmental behaviour and environmental thinking numbers are higher. Table-2. The correlation between pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward reading books and environmental behaviour and thinking
Attitudes toward reading books on environment
Environmental behaviour
Environmental thinking
.438** .000 293
-.318***
r p n
.000 293
***p< .01
In table two, we see that correlation between teachers attitudes toward reading books and their behaviors are in the positive direction(r= .438; p< .01), while there is a negative and significant correlation between attitudes toward book and environmental thinking (r= -.318; p<.01). Table-3. Mean, standard deviation and t-test results for gender and teachers’ attitudes toward books, environmental behaviour; environmental thinking
Attitudes toward reading books on environment Environmental behaviour Environmental thinking
Gender
N
Χ
SD
F M F M F M
162 131 162 131 162 131
1.97 2.32 2.97 3.16 3.84 3.75
.637 .797 .729 .805 .513 .687
t
p
-4.103
.000***
-2.152
.032**
1.382
.168*
*p<.05; **p<.05; ***p< .01
As can be seen in Table 3, there are a significant variances between gender and attitudes toward books (t291= 4.103; p<.01) and between gender and environmental behaviours (t291= -2.152; p<.05), while, on the other hand, there is no significant variance between gender and environmental thinking (t291= 1.382; p>.05).
4360
Çetin Tan / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 4357 – 4361 Table-4. Mean, standard deviation and t-test results for program type and teachers’ attitudes toward books, environmental behaviour; environmental thinking
Attitudes toward books on environment Environmental behaviors Environmental thinking
Major
N
Χ
SD
Elementary Education Science Education Elementary Education Science Education Elementary Education Science Education
180 113
2.15 2.09 3.16 2.88 3.83 3.75
.772 .667 .779 .721 .633 .537
t
p
.750
.454*
3.113
.002**
1.081
.281*
*p<.01; **p>.05
As can be seen in table 4, there is no significant variance between their majors and their attitudes toward books (t291= -.750; p>.05) and environmental thinking, while there is a significant variance between their majors and environmental behaviours (t291= 1.081; p>.05). Table-5. Mean, standard deviation and t-test results for interest in environmental issues and their attitudes toward books, environmental behavior; environmental thinking
Attitudes toward books on environment Environmental thinking Environmental behaviour
Interest in environmental issues or trends Yes No Yes No Yes No
N
Χ
SD
183 109 183 109 183 109
2.37 1.98 2.78 3.50 3.78 3.81
.773 .671 .673 .707 .654 .565
t
p
-4.498
.000***
-8.642
.000***
.518
.605*
*p<.05; ***p<.01
As can be seen in Table 5, there is significant variance between following the trends in environment and their attitudes toward books(t290= -4.498; p<.01) and environmental behaviour (t290= -8.642; p<.01). However, there is no significant variance between trends and environmental thinking(t290= 3.113; p<.05). 4. Discussion Pre-service teachers in general have environmental consciousness and behavior while environmental thinking score has higher than the other two. According to Saracaloğlu, Bozkurt and Serin (2003); McNinch and Steelman (1990); Olsen and Gillis (1983), pre-service teachers have negative attitudes toward reading books with environmental content. This finding suggests that efforts for encouraging them to read books are not enough. Environmental behaviour and reading books about environment are positively correlated. İn other words, the more they change their environmental behaviour the more they tend to show interest to read books regarding environment. But there is no significant correlation between environmetal thinking and reading books in that environmetal thinking does not necessarily turn into changes in environmental attitudes. Pre-service science teachers environmental attitudes are higher than pre-service elementary school teachers.This could be interpreted in two ways. First, number of courses related to environment in science education program is higher than those in elementary school program and these courses spur pre-service teachers to have a positive attitudes toward environment. Bahar (2000) points out the differences in environmental attitudes between students who take courses and those do not take environment courses. In addition, Pre-service teachers who closely follow scientific development tend to change their environmental behaviours as well (Esgin & Karadağ, 2000). In the light of the data obtained The following suggestions could be made: • Reading is an important habit to develop starting with primary school level. All levels of education from primary school onward efforts should be directed toward the development of reading is suggested. • In-service training and conferences for pre-service teachers could be important tools to encourage reading books on environment.
Çetin Tan / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 4357 – 4361
•
4361
Environmental attitudes consist of knowledge and reflection of that knowledge as behavior. Therefore, environmental education should aim to change environmental behaviors as well. To this end, organizing camping involving teachers, pre-service teachers, organizing project competions, and cooperation with NGOs could he helpful for the heightened sensitivity to environmental issues and environmental education.
References Atasoy, E. (2006). Çevre İçin Eğitim: İlköğretim Öğrencilerinin Çevresel Tutum ve Çevre Bilgisi Üzerine Bir Çalışma. (Yayınlanmamış yüksek lisans tezi), Uludağ Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Bursa. Bahar, M. (2000). Üniversite Öğrencilerinin Çevre Eğitimi Konularındaki Ön Bilgi Düzeyi, Kavram Yanılgıları. V. Uluslararası Ekoloji Ve Çevre Sorunları Sempozyumunda Poster Çalışması, TUBİTAK, Ankara. Bradley, J. C., Waliczek, T. M. & Zajicek, J. M. (1999). Relationship Between Environmental Knowledge and Environmental Attitude of High School Students. Journal of Environmental Education, 30 (3), 17-21. Dilek, C. (2008). Çevre bilinci. (Ed. Orçun Bozkurt), Çevre eğitimi. Ankara: Pegema Yayınları. Erantay, N. & Erdoğan, M. (2009). 22 Adımda Doğa Eğitimi. Ankara: ODTÜ Yayıncılık. Erkuş, A. (2003). Psikometri Üzerine Yazılar. Ankara: Türk Psikologlar Derneği Yayınları. Erten, S. (2003). Okul Öncesi Öğretmen Adaylarında Çevre Dostu Davranışların Araştırılması. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 28, 91-100. Esgin, A. & Karadağ, O. (2000). Üniversite Öğrencilerinin Okuma Alışkanlıkları, Popüler Bilim, 25 (175): 19-20. Ilgar, R. (2007). Çevre Eğitiminde Yaygın Eğitimin Rolü ve Önemi. Ondokuz Mayıs Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 23, 40-48. Kahyaoğlu, M. (2011). Çevre Konularıyla İlgili Kitap Okumaya Yönelik Tutum Ölçeği Geliştirme Çalışması. İlköğretim Online, 10 (3), 10561065. Kağıtçıbaşı, Ç. (1999). Yeni İnsan ve İnsanlar. İstanbul: Evrim Basım Yayım ve Dağıtım. Knapp, D. H., Volk, T. L. & Hungerford, H. R. (1995). Global Change: Environmental education module. UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Programme (IEEP). http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001113/111308eo. pdf adresinden 20.12.2012 tarihinde alınmıştır. Keleş, R. & Hamamcı, C. (1997). Çevrebilim. Ankara: İmge Yayınları. McNinch, G. W. & Steelman, P. (1990). Perceived Reading Status of Teacher Education Students. Reading Improvement, Fall. 27 (3), 203-206. Morgan, C.T. (1991). Psikolojiye Giriş. (Çev. Arıcı, H., Aydın, O. ve ark.), Ankara: Hacettepe Üniversitesi Psikoloji Bölümü Yayınları. Morgil, İ., Oskay, Ö. ve Göktaş, A. (2005). Global Çevre Bilinci Ölçeğinin Cümlelerinin Tartışılması. XIV. ulusal eğitim bilimleri kongresi. Pamukkale Üniversitesi, Denizli. Moseley, C. (2000). Teaching for Enviromental Literacy. Clearing House 74 (1): 23-25. Olsen, M. W. & Gillis, M. (1983). Teaching Reading Study Skills and Course Content to Preservice Teachers. Reading World, December. 23 (2). 124-133. Özdemir, O. (2007). Yeni Bir Çevre Eğitimi Perspektifi: Sürdürülebilir Gelişme Amaçlı Eğitim. Eğitim ve Bilim Dergisi, 32 (145), 23-38. Saracaloğlu, A. S., Bozkurt, N. ve Serin, O. (2003). Üniversite Öğrencilerinin Okuma İlgileri ve Okuma Alışkanlıklarını Etkileyen Faktörler. Eğitim Araştırmaları, (4) 12, 148-157. Susar Kırmızı, F. (2012). Öğretmen Adaylarının Kitap Okuma Alışkanlığına Yönelik Tutum Ölçeği: Geçerlik ve Güvenirlik Çalışması. Turkish Studies, 7 (3), 2353-2366. Uzun, N. ve Sağlam, N. (2006). Orta Öğretim Öğrencileri İçin Çevresel Tutum Ölçeği Geliştirme ve Geçerliliği. Hacettepe Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi, 30, 240-250. Ülgen, G. (1994). Eğitim Psikolojisi: Kavramlar, İlkeler, Yöntemler, Kuramlar ve Uygulamalar. Ankara: Bilim Yayınları.
ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 4357 – 4361
5th World Conference on Educational Sciences - WCES 2013
An assessment of pre-service teachers' attitudes toward books on environment and, relationship between attitudes and environmental behaviours; environmental thinking Çetin Tan * Siirt University, Faculty Of Education, 56100, Siirt, Turkey
Abstract Environmental education is of great importance in the prevention of environmental issues and creating a healthy environment For this reason, the factors that play a role in the formation of primary school teachers' attitudes toward the environment need to be studied in depth. In this study, primary school teachers' attitudes towards reading books on environmental issues and their environmental behaviors and thinking have been investigated. The "Environmental Attitude Scale" developed by Uzun ve Sağlam (2006) and "Attitudes towards reading books on environmental issues” developed by Kahyaoğlu (2010) scale were used. 16:00 SPSS packet program was utilized to analyze the data. In this study, teachers' attitudes towards reading books are analyzed in light of the three variables: (i) programs or majors they are attending, (ii) gender and (iii) types of high schools they have graduated. The results show that student teachers' attitudes towards reading books on environmental issues show significant variances across gender and the program type, but no significant variance was found in relation to type of high school. © 2013 Theand Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection peer review under the responsibility of Prof. Dr. Servet Bayram Selection and/or peer-review under World Education and Research Center. © 2013 The Authors Published by responsibility Elsevier Ltd. of AllAcademic rights reserved Keywords: Environmental education, attitude towards environment, reading books, pre-service teachers
1. Introduction In our age, socio-economic, scientific and technological developments have dramatically altered both individuals’ daily habits and the environmental conditions. The changes have particularly been at an unprecented rate in that natural events become inseparable from people’s daily routine activities related to their interaction with biosphere. We can claim that environmental problems, whether deliberate or by an oversight, have paved the way for substantial, accumulative environmental damages at a global scale. Damages as a result of human impact on the environment at first largely went unnoticed due to the nature’s ability to renew itself. However, there is a consensus that threshold for environment to sustain and renew itself in time had repeatedly been passed, so public opinion, beginning in 1970s, spearheaded by experts who were discontent with changes in environment, turned attention to understanding and solving environmental problems. As a result, people started to become curious and take action toward solving the issues affecting them in their immediate sorroundings (Keleş & Hamamcı, 1997; Dilek, 2008). In other words, the universality of the understanding of the global environmental problems caused by human impact has brought about environmental conciousness. Previously simply seen as water and air pollution and toxic
* Çetin TAN. E-mail address: [email protected]
1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.946
4358
Çetin Tan / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 4357 – 4361
waste, environmental problems become dire threats with the thinning of ozone layer, global climate change and the extinction of biological diversity. Human impact is the main source of environmental problems while humans are also the answer to solving these problems (Bradley, Waliczek ve Zajicek, 1999). Changes in environmental behavior also go hand in hand with knowledge, attitudes changes. In this context, environmental education must be considered as the most effective way to solve these problems (Erten, 2003; Uzun & Sağlam, 2006). The need for environmental education for the betterment of humans is more urgen than ever in that damages to environmental would have a detrimental effect on people’s daily life. For this reason, environmental education should have a prominent place in school curriculum (Ilgar, 2007). By creating an environmental awareness for an individual or society as a whole, solutions to environmental problems could be solved (Erantay & Erdoğan, 2009). There are many definitions of environmental education. Atasoy (2006) defines environmental education’s mission as educating citizens who are aware of these issues with sensitivity and interest in local, regional, national, and global problems. Erten (2004) views environmental education for the protection of the environment attitudes, values, knowledge and skills development, eco-friendly behaviors. Moseley (2000) defines environmental education as a life-long interdisciplinary approach contributing to the solution of current environmental problems, with the goal of creating a world population who is responsible for the things they have done to the environment. When all definitions are taken together, on the one hand with environmental education environmental awareness is thought to be important, which aims encouage people to be actively participate in the solution of problems as responsible individuals (Özdemir, 2007). In this process, the attitudes of individuals come to the fore. Because attitude is one of the most important determinants of human behaviors. Individuals' attitudes, love, hatred for each other significantly affect the behavior of them (Kağıtçıbaşı, 1999, Morgan, 1991). Attitudes have important important feature: they last long period of time. They include cognitive, emotional and behavioral forms. In this regard, measurement of attitudes and the extent of them situation are desirable in many areas of scientific studies (Erkuş, 2003). Attitudes give direction to the individual's behavior that can lead to bias in the decision making process (Ülgen, 1994). There are many factors that play a role in the formation of attitudes (Susar Kırmızı, 2012: 2356). This study aims to evaluate pre-service teachers' attitudes towards reading books on the environment and the relationship between environmental behavior and thinking. In light of the findings, this study is thought to have contributed to the environmental education and its place in education. 2. Method 2.1. Participants The study was conducted at Siirt University in Turkey. Participants were 293 prospective teachers who were attending at elementary department in faculty of education. 2.2. Data collection “Attitudes toward reading environmental books” was used and administered top re-service teachers as data data collection instrument developed by Kahyaoğlu (2011). The scale for the instrument is 5 type Likert Scale consisting of 20 items. Reliability for the scale is .87 while the cronbach alpha reliability is .93. The Likert 5 type “Environmental Attitudes” scale developed by Uzun and Sağlam (2006) was used to investigate environmental attitudes (13 items) and environmental thinking (14 items). This scale’s cronbach alpha reliability is .89 and environmental thinking is .79.
4359
Çetin Tan / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 4357 – 4361
2.3. Data analysis Mean, standard deviation and t-test analysis were conducted to determine preservice teachers’ attitudes toward reading environment books, their environmental attitudes and environmental thinking. To determine the correlation between attitudes toward reading books and environmental thinking, Pearson correlation coefficient was utilized for the study. 3. Findings The data for relationship between preservice teachers’ environmental attitudes, environmental thinking and attitudes toward reading books are presented below: Table-1. The descriptive statistics for pre-service teachers' attitudes towards reading books related to the environment and environmental behaviour and thinking
Attitudes toward reading books on environment Environmental behavior Environmental thinking
N 293 293 293
Χ
2.13 3.05 3.80
SD .732 .768 .598
As can be seen in Table 1, the mean for preservice teachers’ attitudes toward books is 2.13 and Standard deviation is .732, the mean for environmental behaviour is 3.05; the mean for environmental thinking is 3.80 and Standard deviation is .598. İt could be said that preservice teachers’ attitudes toward books are low, whereas their environmental behaviour and environmental thinking numbers are higher. Table-2. The correlation between pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward reading books and environmental behaviour and thinking
Attitudes toward reading books on environment
Environmental behaviour
Environmental thinking
.438** .000 293
-.318***
r p n
.000 293
***p< .01
In table two, we see that correlation between teachers attitudes toward reading books and their behaviors are in the positive direction(r= .438; p< .01), while there is a negative and significant correlation between attitudes toward book and environmental thinking (r= -.318; p<.01). Table-3. Mean, standard deviation and t-test results for gender and teachers’ attitudes toward books, environmental behaviour; environmental thinking
Attitudes toward reading books on environment Environmental behaviour Environmental thinking
Gender
N
Χ
SD
F M F M F M
162 131 162 131 162 131
1.97 2.32 2.97 3.16 3.84 3.75
.637 .797 .729 .805 .513 .687
t
p
-4.103
.000***
-2.152
.032**
1.382
.168*
*p<.05; **p<.05; ***p< .01
As can be seen in Table 3, there are a significant variances between gender and attitudes toward books (t291= 4.103; p<.01) and between gender and environmental behaviours (t291= -2.152; p<.05), while, on the other hand, there is no significant variance between gender and environmental thinking (t291= 1.382; p>.05).
4360
Çetin Tan / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 4357 – 4361 Table-4. Mean, standard deviation and t-test results for program type and teachers’ attitudes toward books, environmental behaviour; environmental thinking
Attitudes toward books on environment Environmental behaviors Environmental thinking
Major
N
Χ
SD
Elementary Education Science Education Elementary Education Science Education Elementary Education Science Education
180 113
2.15 2.09 3.16 2.88 3.83 3.75
.772 .667 .779 .721 .633 .537
t
p
.750
.454*
3.113
.002**
1.081
.281*
*p<.01; **p>.05
As can be seen in table 4, there is no significant variance between their majors and their attitudes toward books (t291= -.750; p>.05) and environmental thinking, while there is a significant variance between their majors and environmental behaviours (t291= 1.081; p>.05). Table-5. Mean, standard deviation and t-test results for interest in environmental issues and their attitudes toward books, environmental behavior; environmental thinking
Attitudes toward books on environment Environmental thinking Environmental behaviour
Interest in environmental issues or trends Yes No Yes No Yes No
N
Χ
SD
183 109 183 109 183 109
2.37 1.98 2.78 3.50 3.78 3.81
.773 .671 .673 .707 .654 .565
t
p
-4.498
.000***
-8.642
.000***
.518
.605*
*p<.05; ***p<.01
As can be seen in Table 5, there is significant variance between following the trends in environment and their attitudes toward books(t290= -4.498; p<.01) and environmental behaviour (t290= -8.642; p<.01). However, there is no significant variance between trends and environmental thinking(t290= 3.113; p<.05). 4. Discussion Pre-service teachers in general have environmental consciousness and behavior while environmental thinking score has higher than the other two. According to Saracaloğlu, Bozkurt and Serin (2003); McNinch and Steelman (1990); Olsen and Gillis (1983), pre-service teachers have negative attitudes toward reading books with environmental content. This finding suggests that efforts for encouraging them to read books are not enough. Environmental behaviour and reading books about environment are positively correlated. İn other words, the more they change their environmental behaviour the more they tend to show interest to read books regarding environment. But there is no significant correlation between environmetal thinking and reading books in that environmetal thinking does not necessarily turn into changes in environmental attitudes. Pre-service science teachers environmental attitudes are higher than pre-service elementary school teachers.This could be interpreted in two ways. First, number of courses related to environment in science education program is higher than those in elementary school program and these courses spur pre-service teachers to have a positive attitudes toward environment. Bahar (2000) points out the differences in environmental attitudes between students who take courses and those do not take environment courses. In addition, Pre-service teachers who closely follow scientific development tend to change their environmental behaviours as well (Esgin & Karadağ, 2000). In the light of the data obtained The following suggestions could be made: • Reading is an important habit to develop starting with primary school level. All levels of education from primary school onward efforts should be directed toward the development of reading is suggested. • In-service training and conferences for pre-service teachers could be important tools to encourage reading books on environment.
Çetin Tan / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 4357 – 4361
•
4361
Environmental attitudes consist of knowledge and reflection of that knowledge as behavior. Therefore, environmental education should aim to change environmental behaviors as well. To this end, organizing camping involving teachers, pre-service teachers, organizing project competions, and cooperation with NGOs could he helpful for the heightened sensitivity to environmental issues and environmental education.
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