An examination of the relationship between pre-service science teachers'awareness about sustainable development and attitudes and behaviours toward environmental issues

The purpose of this study is to examine relationship between pre-service science teachers' awareness about sustainable development and their attitudes and behaviours toward environmental issues. For this purpose, initially, pre-service science teachers' awareness about sustainable development, their attitudes and behaviours toward environmental issues were detemined and examined in terms of different variables. In second part of research, the relationship between pre-service science teachers' awareness about sustainable development and their attitudes and behaviours toward environmental issues and the relationship between their attitudes and behaviours toward environmental issues were determined. Lastly, whether pre-service science teachers' attitudes and behaviours toward environmental issues predict their awareness about sustainable development or not were presented. In this study, correlational research model, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The sample of study were 712 pre-service science teachers who study at 4 different universities. Data was collected with 'Personal Information Form', 'Sustainable Development Awareness Scale', 'Attitude Scale towards Environmetal Problems' and 'Behavior Scale towards Environmetal Problems'. In analysis of quantitative data, descriptive statistics, independent samples t-test, one way ANOVA, pearson correlation and multi-linear regression analysis were conducted. The research showed that preservice science teachers' awareness about sustainable development is high level, their attitudes toward environmental problems are positive but their behaviors toward environmental problems are medium level. In addition, the relationsip between pre-service science teachers' awareness about sustainable development and their attitudes toward environmental issues and the relationship between pre-service science teachers' attitudes and behaviors toward environmental issues is medium level in positive direction but the relationsip between pre-service science teachers' awareness about sustainable development and their behaviors toward environmental issues is low level in positive direction.