Attitudes of pre-service social studies teachers towards global problems and suggestions about their curriculum

The aim of this study is to examine the attitudes of pre-service social studies teachers towards global problems in line with some features and determine the new topics about global issues to be included in the curriculum. Survey method used in this research. The study was conducted in seven universities randomly selected in spring term of the 2007-2008 academic year. The universities were: Gazi University, Ankara University, Selçuk University, İstanbul University, Gazi Osman Paşa University, 100. Yıl University and Karadeniz Technical University. In the framework of the study, an attitude scale was developed in order to detect the attitudes of pre-service social studies teachers towards global problems. The attitude scale was administered to a total of 734 pre-service teachers. In addition, an open-ended question was included about their suggestions for a global issues teaching program. The data was analyzed with an SPSS 17, Lisrel 8.7 package program and for the content a qualitative analysis method was used. Multivariate variance analysis (MANOVA) was used to examine how attitudes towards global issues vary according to differences in the personal information form. In addition, descriptive and confirmative factor analyses in developing attitude scale about the global problems and content analysis in preparing a report from open-ended questions were made use of. The main finding was that the attitudes of pre-service teachers towards global problems vary partially in line with some features. In the conclusion suggestions are made to develop pre-service teachers? awareness of global issues and how these issues can be incorporated into curriculum.Keywords: Global education, global problems, social studies