Preschool Teacher Candidates’ Sensitivities And Attitudes Towards Environment

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of an enriched environmental education course on the attitudes, behaviors and sensitivities of 4th grade teacher candidates who study in Undergraduate Program of Preschool Education. A pretest-posttest control group design and quasi-experimental design has been used in this study. Based on this method, the workgroup was formed of 77 teacher candidates, of whom 39 in experimental group and 38 of whom in control group. "Enriched Environmental Education for Children" course was conducted on the experimental group for 14 weeks. Environmental Sensitivity Scale for University students has been applied to teacher candidates simultaneously as pretest-posttest. In addition to this, "Scale of Affective Tendencies towards Environment" and "Environmental Behavior Scale" were also used within the last week of course. It was seen that environmental sensitivity of teacher candidates who took the course, was significantly more influenced than environmental sensitivity of teacher candidates that did not take the course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]