The effect of activities in which environmental emotions embedded on preservice science teachers' environmental literacy and attitudes towards sustainable environment

The purpose of the present research study was to investigate how environmental education enriched with a ten-week intervention based on the conceptual framework of environmental emotions change preservice science teachers' environmental literacy and attitude toward sustainable environment. A total of 70 preservice science teachers participated in the study designed as pretest, posttest control group true model. Multiple types of data were gathered by means of environmental academic achievemet test, scales of environmentally responsible behaviour, affective dispositions toward environment, attitudes toward sustainable environment, interview form and reflection papers. It was found that there were statistically significant differences in relation to knowledge, affective dispositions, attitudes and responsible behaviours toward environment. Additionally, qualitative analysis showed that participants improved themselves in terms of connectedness to nature, biospheric environmental concern, sensitivity and inclusion with nature in turn. During the analysis, emergent codes were mostly categorized as sustainability-recycle, consciousness-raising, and sensitivity-responsibility. It was concluded that environmental emotions should also be considered as an integral part of environmental education considering its promising mediating effect among environmental knowledge and responsible environmental behaviours. Key Words: Environmental education, Environmental literacy, Inclusion with nature, Environmental emotions, Environmentally responsible behaviour