Evaluation of the perception of environmental issues among the science pre service teachers and examination of consistency between their perception and attitude of the environment

This study aims to examine the perception of the pre service teachers of science and the relationship between their perceptions and their environmental attitudes.Target Sample includes the first, second, third and fourth graders from all of the Science Teachers Training Departments inTurkey. The sample of the study includes the first, second, third and the forth graders (Education year: 2010-2011) of Science Department of Faculty of Education in Çukurova University.127 pre-service teachers have joined the study in which Survey and correlation research methods of descriptive research models have been used. Environmental thinking and behavioural sub-dimensions comprised from ?Environmental Attitude Scale? developed by Uzun and Sağlam (2006) and Perception Survey for Understanding Environmental Concepts? developed by Selvi (2007) were utilized while gathering the study data together. The perception of environmental concepts and attitudes were examined according to gender variable and environmental training of pre-service teachers.Results of the study show that there is a meaningful difference among pre-service teachers? attitude according to their attendance to the environmental training courses while there is no meaningful difference according to gender variable. It is also found out that there is a meaningful difference in perception of pre-service teachers of science department about the environmental concepts according to their attendance to enviroment courses while there isn?t such a meaningful difference according to gender variableFurthermore, the study shows that there is a positive low level relationship between the pre-service teachers? environmental attitudes and perception of environmental conceptsKeywords: Environment training, environmental concepts, environmental attitude