Examination of permaculture attitudes of science teacher candidates

Permaculture is a concept that will make a great contribution to sustainable development and has not yet seen the value it deserves in our country, and refers to a design-oriented system that aims to organize human settlements in a sustainable way. Since science teachers have a great role in raising awareness about permaculture in our society, the aim of this study is to examine the relationship between pre-service science teachers' attitudes towards permaculture and various demographic variables. In this study, Permaculture Attitude Scale, a 5-point Likert-type scale consisting of 40 questions developed by Özçalık and Yörübulut (2022), was used as a data collection tool to examine pre-service science teachers' attitudes towards permaculture. The scale was applied to 166 pre-service science teachers studying at Inonu University, Faculty of Education, Department of Science Education in the 2023-2024 academic year. The data obtained from the scale applied to determine whether the permaculture attitudes of pre-service science teachers differ significantly according to various demographic variables were analyzed using SPSS program. Independent samples t-test was used in the analysis of gender and housing type variables; One-Way ANOVA was used in the analysis of grade level, type of high school graduated, mother and father education level, mother and father occupation, monthly income of the family and place of residence variables. According to the results of the analysis, a significant difference was found between pre-service science teachers' permaculture attitudes and their gender, and this difference was in favor of female pre-service teachers. At the same time, a significant difference was found between pre-service science teachers' permaculture attitudes and the settlement where they grew up, and this difference shows that the permaculture attitudes of pre-service teachers who grew up in the district are higher than the permaculture attitudes of pre-service teachers who grew up in the village / town. There was no significant difference between the permaculture attitudes of pre-service science teachers and their grade level, type of high school graduated from, mother and father education level, mother and father occupation and monthly income.