The comparison of environmental li̇teracy of pre-service teacher at the department of elementary education according to their programs

Roth, who first used environmental literacy in the literature, defined environmental problems as awareness and understanding of environmental problems. Afterwards, by improving the concept of environmental literacy in the process, he defined that environmental literate individuals have knowledge, skills, attitudes, experience and responsible behaviour's towards the environment. Later, he determined their levels and divided them into four sections as knowledge, affective tendency, behaviour and cognitive skills, and these sections were subdivided into low, functional and operational. The programs which are the basic elements of education and the teachers who implement these programs are inevitable for the contribution of educating their students as environmental literate. At this point, it has a great importance for teachers to be environmental literate individuals and they need to receive training for this purpose in their upbringing process. The aim of this study is to determine the levels of environmental literacy of pre-service teachers who are students of Hacettepe University studying science education, mathematics education, preschool education, classroom teaching .The study showed that one of the aims of teacher training programs is to educate individuals with environmental literacy. However, it is predicted that the number of environmental literate individuals in society will increase rapidly. Because it is the teachers who educate the society. Together with the study, the environmental literacy of the teachers was compared and a general profile was created based on various variables (including the programs, gender, class levels, and family education status). The levels of environmental literacy of the candidates were found to be moderate, their perceptions and attitudes and their anxiety levels were high. It was concluded that mother and father education levels do not affect the environmental literacy of the candidates. As the gender distribution in the study group was not fair, the conclusions drawn by gender were not reliable. It is one of the results of the research that teacher candidates affect the participation levels of the regions where their childhoods passed.