The mediating role of altruism in the relationship between the empathic tendencies of pre-school teachers and the nature relatedness and environmental consciousness

The aim of this study is to determine the mediating effect of altruism in the relationship between the empathic tendencies of preschool teachers and the nature relatedness and environmental consciousness. The study was conducted in a correlational screening model among quantitative research methods. The study group consists of 305 pre-school teachers working in the nursery classes of public and private kindergartens and primary schools in the central Efeler District and Köşk, Germencik, Incirliova and Söke districts of Aydın province during 2018-2019 academic year determined by simple random cluster sampling method. "Empathic Tendency" scale developed by Dökmen (1988) and "Altruism Scale", originally developed by Ruston et al. (1981) and adapted to Turkish by Tekeş and Hasta (2015) to Turkish and "Nature Relatedness Scale", developed originally by Nisbet et al. (2009) and adapted to Turkish by Cakir et al. (2015) and "Environmental Consciousness Scale", originally developed by Milfont and Duckitt (2006) and adapted to Turkish by Ak (2008) were used as data collection tools in the study. When the normality analyses of the obtained data were examined, it was found that the skewness and baseness coefficients of the scores from the Empathic Tendency, Altruism, Nature Relatedness and Environmental Consciousness Scales varied between -1 and +1, and it was assumed that the data provided a normal distribution. The analyses of the sub-objectives of "the mediator role of altruism in the relationship between empathic tendency and nature relatedness" and "the mediator role of altruism in the relationship between empathic tendency and environmental consciousness" were carried out using the PROCESS macro (Model 4) developed by Andrew Hayes using the SPSS infrastructure. When the results of the study were examined, it was noted that as a result of the analyses carried out with the SPSS PROCESS, the indirect effect of empathic tendency on the relationship with nature relatedness was found to be significant. Thus, altruism was the mediator for the relationship between empathic tendency and the nature relatedness (β=.13, 95% BCA CI [.08; .19]. The indirect effect of emphatic tendency on environmental consciousness was found to be significant. Thus, altruism was the mediator for the relationship between emphatic tendency and environmental consciousness (β=.36, %95 BCA CI [.18; .57].