Determining the awareness of science teacher candidates about global climate change

This study was conducted to determine the level of awareness of teacher candidates on global climate change, who will raise conscious and sensitive individuals about global climate change, which is an important environmental problem. The survey method, which is a quantitative research design, was used in the study. The universe of this study consists of 104 science teacher candidates studying at the 4th grade science teaching department in 7 different universities' education faculties by using convenient sampling method, which is one of the simple random sampling methods. The "Global Climate Change Awareness Scale" developed by the researcher was used to determine the global climate change awareness of science teacher candidates. The level of awareness of teacher candidates on global climate change was evaluated according to the gender variable and their answers to the items in the scale. The collected data were analyzed in the SPSS-27 program using quantitative analysis methods. The validity and reliability studies of the questionnaire developed by the researcher were carried out. In line with the data obtained, it has been determined that pre-service science teachers have a high awareness of the physical consequences of global climate change. In addition, it was determined that global climate change awareness showed a significant difference according to gender (p=.001<0.05). As a result, the awareness of science teacher candidates about global climate change was examined with the "Global Climate Change Awareness Scale" used in the study, and as a result of this examination ıt has been determined that global climate change awareness is at a moderate. This study contributed to the literature by developing a new scale. The findings and results obtained in this study are important in terms of being a source for similar studies in the future. Keywords: Global climate change, science teacher candidates, awareness