Attitudes and opinions of candidates of science teachers regarding out of school learning environments

It is known that education and training in the new developed world is developing with ongoing innovations. We cannot adapt to these developments only through education in the classroom. So we have to get out of the classroom. We can say that this is best realized in out-of-school learning environments. But the main factor that will realize out-of-school learning is teachers. In order to see how much our teachers know about out-of-school learning and how much they can plan it, we aimed to reach both a scale for out-of-school learning and their thoughts on this subject. For this purpose, our study group consists of 4th grade pre-service science teachers studying at Akdeniz University Faculty of Education in the 2021-2022 academic year. Mixed method was used to investigate the study in more depth. First of all, the 'Organizing Out-of-School Learning Scale' developed by Bolat and Köroğlu, (2020) was applied to the pre-service teachers. This scale was applied to the same pre-service science teachers before the out-of-school learning environments course in the curriculum of pre-service science teachers and after the end of the curriculum of the course. The effect of the course on the pre-service teachers was examined. At the same time, a semi-structured interview form was also applied to the pre-service science teachers to obtain their knowledge about out-of-school learning environments in more detail. In the interview form, questions were included with the aim of testing how much the information they learned in the out-of-school learning environments course developed and the permanence of their knowledge. As a result of the study, it is thought that pre-service science teachers' knowledge and planning about out-of-school learning environments significantly improved after the out-of-school learning environments course, and that this situation will be more effective when pre-service science teachers perform out-of-school learning to their students after they start working. Keywords: Learning, out-of-school learning, out-of-school learning environments, out-of-school science teaching.