The relationship between intellectual thinking trends and environmental ethics awareness of science teachers

Today, the continuous change and development of the environment, nature, and technology in which we live encourage the active use of critical thinking and intellectual skills. There is a need to know the awareness of environmental ethics of science teachers who will grow next generations and the intellectual thinking tendencies that are thought to be effective in shaping this awareness correctly. This study was conducted to evaluate the relationship between intellectual thinking disposition, which is a sub-dimension of critical thinking skills in science teachers, and environmental ethics awareness. The research was in the screening design, the universe of the research consisted of science teachers working in public schools affiliated to the National Education Directorate, in Manisa city center (N=183). The entire universe was reached without sample selection. The sample consisted of 146 (80.0%) science teachers who volunteered to participate in the study. Sociodemographic Data Collection Form, "Intellectual Thinking Tendency Scale" and Environmental Ethics Awareness Scale " were used as data collection tools being used. Descriptive statistics in the analysis of the data, t-test in independent groups in a single analysis, and ANOVA were used evaluated with multi-directional variance analysis and correlation. It was found that there is a weak relationship between the science teachers' intellectual thinking dispositions and environmental ethics awareness. It was concluded that as the scores of Intellectual Thinking Tendency increased, environmental ethics awareness scores increased. In the line with these results, it can be recommended to carry out activities to increase the intellectual thinking skills of teachers, and to include activities that develop high-level thinking skills in educational programs and textbooks to increase students' intellectual thinking skills.