Determination of ecological footprint awareness levels of Social Studies and Turkish teacher candidates

The aim of this study is to determine the ecological footprint awareness levels of teacher candidates studying in the Department of Social Studies and Turkish. In the study, it was tried to determine the level of environmental awareness of teacher candidates in terms of some variables. In the study carried out, analyzes were carried out with the descriptive survey model. In the research, the data were collected with the "Ecological Footprint Awareness Scale" developed by the researchers and analyzed with the SPSS 22.0 package program. In the analysis of quantitative data, descriptive statistics techniques, one-factor ANOVA test, correlation analyzes and t-test independent sampling method were used. In the analysis of the data, Man Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis H tests were used for the data that did not show normal distribution. Variables of the research; gender, program, class level, the longest residence, monthly economic income, mother and father education level. The research was carried out with teacher candidates studying in the Social Studies and Turkish Education Departments of the Faculty of Education of Fırat University in the fall semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. A total of 326 teacher candidates studying at every grade level from the 1st to the 4th grade from the Social Studies and Turkish departments took part in the research. Research findings; Ecological footprint awareness of teacher candidates is in favor of women in the sub-dimension of energy and waste according to the gender variable. There was no significant difference in any sub-dimension according to the program, class levels, longest living place, monthly economic income and mother's education level. There was a significant difference in the sub-dimension of water consumption according to the education level of the father. Keywords: Environmental Issues, Sustainable Development, Environmental Policies, Environmental Education, Ecological Footprint.