Investigation of the sustainable environmental attitude of scientific and social sciences teacher candidates

Goal: The aim of this study is to determine whether pre-service Science and Social Studies teachers' attitudes towards sustainable environment and socio-demographic characteristics differ in terms of sustainable environmental attitude. Material Method: In accordance with the purpose of the research, causal comparative relational research model was used in the study.The population of the research, Science and Social Studies teacher candidates studying in 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 academic year; The sample consisted of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade Science and Social Studies teacher candidates from 23 universities selected with the "Stratified and convenient sampling" method from this population. Results: Within the framework of the survey application, 18 universities were accessed and the final data of the research consisted of socio-demographic information of 4278 participants and the answers they gave in the classroom environment to the Sustainable Environmental Attitude Scale, which was developed by Yıldız (2011) based on a 5-point Likert basis (2011). Data obtained from pre-service teachers were analyzed in SPSS 22 statistical package program. The reliability ratio of the sustainable environmental attitude scale was calculated as 0.91 for 27 statements. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) result gave a value of 0.948. Differences in students' attitudes towards socio-demographic education were tested with one-way ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis. Conclusion: According to the results of the study, it is possible to say that teacher candidates who constitute the research sample have relatively high sustainable environmental attitude in terms of their scores. According to the other findings obtained at the end of the research, the gender of the participants, the university they studied, the department they studied, their class level and whether they took environmental science courses showed statistically significant differences, while the place they lived did not differ significantly. Some suggestions were developed by discussing the obtained findings in the light of the researches in the literature. Key Words: Attitude, Science teacher candidates, Social studies teacher candidates, Sustainable, environment