Investigation of the relationship between primary teacher candidates attitudes towards socioscientific issues and environmental literacy

This study aims to examine primary school teacher candidates' attitudes towards socioscientific issues and environmental literacy levels in terms of various variables. For this purpose, the survey model, which is one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the research. The study group of the research consists of 226 primary school teacher candidates studying at Kastamonu University Faculty of Education in the 2021-2022 academic year. In the study, the Attitude Scale towards Socioscientific Issues developed by Topçu (2010) to measure the attitudes of pre-service teachers towards socioscientific issues, and the Environmental Literacy Scale for Adults (ELSA) developed by Atabek Yiğit, Köklükaya, Yavuz and Demirhan (2014) were used to determine their environmental literacy levels. The obtained data were analyzed using the SPSS 25 package program. As a result of the research, it was determined that the attitudes of teacher candidates towards socioscientific issues were above medium and their environmental literacy levels were high. It has been determined that teacher candidates' attitudes towards socioscientific issues and environmental literacy levels show significant differences according to some variables. While primary school teacher candidates' attitudes towards socioscientific issues differ significantly according to grade level and scientific publication or journal follow-up variables; No significant difference was found according to the variables of gender, type of high school graduated, and educational status of parents. Environmental literacy levels of teacher candidates show a significant difference in favor of girls according to the gender variable. The environmental literacy levels of teacher candidates differ significantly from the environmental awareness sub-dimension according to the variable of following scientific publications or journals. No significant difference was found according to the variables of grade level, type of high school graduated and educational status of parents.