Comparison of environmental literacy levels of chemistry teachers, teaching students and environmentally-related professional groups

The aim of this study is to determine three groups (chemistry teacher candidates, chemistry teachers who receive environmental education and individuals in different occupations, who are directly related to the environment) environmental literacy, in terms of their interest in environmental issues, their knowledge, attitude and usage and then to compare these three groups regarding their environmental literacy levels. The individuals in the sample set of this study is the occupational groups; chemistry teachers working in various places throughout Turkey, chemistry teacher candidates studying at education faculties and the individuals who are working in Ankara with the occupations of environmental engineering, architect, urban planner, agricultural engineering, civil engineering, geology engineering, topographical engineering, mining engineering, forest engineering, biologist, chemical engineering, geophysical engineering, petroleum engineering. Participants in these occupational groups, were selected by purposeful sampling method and then included in this study. A total of 793 participants constitute the sample set of this study. Scanning design, which is one of the quantitative studies, was applied in order to determine the environmental literacy levels of the study groups. Environmental Literacy Scale developed by Teksöz, Şahin and Ertepınar (2010) was used in the study. With this scale, it was aimed to identify environmental literacy of chemistry teacher candidates, chemistry teachers and environmental-related occupational groups under four main topics: environmental knowledge, environmental uses, attitude and interest in environmental problems. The data obtained in the research were analyzed using IBM SPSS 26 program. In order to test the normality conditions of the collected data, Kolmogorov Smirnov Test was applied. It was determined that many tests did not show normal distribution so, nonparametric tests were applied. In order to make comparison in terms of environmental literacy components between the study groups, Kruskal Wallis H-Test and Mann Whitney U-Tests were used. Regarding the occupations of the chemistry teacher candidates, chemistry teachers and the individuals in environmentally related professions scored semantically in terms of knowledge, their interest in environmental issues and their total scores of environmental literacy, while their attitude and usage are not differentiated. In consideration of the environmentally related different professions; while their knowledge, attitude, usage and total scores of environmental literacy is expressive, their scores of interest are not differentiated. It was found that information and the total scores of the environmental literacy of all participants in this study group is differed significantly according to gender; Also, it has been determined that the attitude, use and interest scores do not differ according to gender. Besides, it was found that the scores of the chemistry teacher candidates, in the environmental literacy subcomponent tests and the environmental literacy, are not differentiated in gender wise. On the other hand it is determined that chemistry teachers only information scores, and the individuals in environmentally related professions attitude and their total scores of environmental literacy are differantiated in gender basis. It was detected that chemistry teaching candidates environmental literacy scores and their subcomponents did not differ significantly according to the class level. While it was determined that knowledge, usage, interest and the total score of environmental literacy of chemistry teachers and only the interest test score of the individuals in environmental-related occupational groups differ significantly according to their professional experience.