Determination of pre-service science teachers' level of awareness of environmental ethics

The purpose of the current study is to develop an environmental ethics awareness scale and to determine the pre-service science teachers' level of awareness of environmental ethics. The population of the study is comprised of the pre-service science teachers attending public universities in Turkey. The sampling of the study was constructed by considering level 1 (12 regional units) in the statistical regional classification made by Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK). The sampling of the present study was constructed by selecting one university having the department of science teacher education. Thus, totally 12 university were selected and 1023 pre-service science teachers from these universities participated in the study in 2013-2014 academic year. As the data collection tool of the current study, "Environmental Ethics Awareness Scale" developed by the researcher was used. In the analysis of the study, SPSS program package was employed. During the scale development process, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted for the specified purpose of the present study on the scale; t-test and ANOVA were also run. As a result of the analyses conducted, cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was found to be 0.95. The confirmatory analysis conducted revealed that RMSEA 0.070; CFI 0.96; AGFI 0.86; NFI 0.95. The findings of the study provided some evidences supporting that a reliable and valid scale was developed. The results of t-test also revealed that there is a significant difference between the female and male participants of the study (t(1021)=4.292; p<.001). No significant difference was found between t-test results obtained for the third-year and fourth-year students (t(1021)=1.090; p>.05). No significant difference was also found as a result of the variance analysis conducted in relation to university (F(11-1011)=51.215; p<,001). Some suggestions were provided on conducting an environmental ethics research on different samples and variables. Key Words: Environmental ethics, science education, awareness level, pre-service teacher