The level of ecological footprint awareness and environmental attitudes of classroom teacher candidates

The Level of Ecological Footprint Awareness and Environmental Attitudes of Candidate Classroom Teachers The purpose of this research is to investigate the level of ecological footprint awareness and environmental attitudes of candidate classroom teachers. It is important to know the environmental attitude and ecological footprint awareness levels of primary candidate school teachers in order to raise a generation susceptible to environmental problems. Because the positive or negative attitudes of the students towards the environment in childhood are manifested in various forms in the following years. Therefore, it is much easier and at the same time important for the students to acquire positive attitudes towards the environment in the early ages by moving from the proverb of "tree can be bend while it is fresh". The research was designed within the context of the relational model. The universe of research constitutes students who study in the Basic Education Department of Faculty of Education at the Eskişehir Osmangazi University during the fall semester of 2016-2017 academic year. Two data collection tools were used in this study. The first one is the "Ecological Footprint Awareness Scale" developed by Coşkun and Sarıkaya (2014) and the second is the "New Environmental Paradigm Scale" developed by Dunlap and Van Liere (2000). According to the findings of the research, awareness levels including the environmental attitude scale were found to be "moderate" except for the "energy" which is "high" sub-dimension of the ecological footprint scale of the candidate classroom teachers. In addition to the theoretical dimension of the courses related to environmental subjects during university education, it may be suggested to develop the practical dimension in such a way that official and state institutions will be also observed in their activities they practice in the field. Keywords: Candidate classroom teachers, ecological footprint, environmental attitude, teacher education