ELT Teacher Trainees Attitudes Towards Environmental Education And Their Tendency To Use It In The Language Classroom

Abstract

With the change of focus in language teaching from grammar-based approaches to more communicative approaches, contextual language learning gained importance and found body in the English Language classroom. Global issues constitute one of the most popular contexts for purposeful language learning and meaningful language use. Increasing number of ELT (English Language Teaching) course books involve global issues in their content. Within the scope of socially responsible teaching (SRT) it is believed that it is the teachers responsibility to help their learners develop awareness on these issues. From this perspective current research aims to shed some light into ELT teacher education process by investigating teacher trainees attitudes and tendencies towards environmental education and their inclusion in the ELT lessons. Data for the research is collected from 224 third year ELT teacher trainees via a questionnaire prepared by the researchers. The reliability of the questionnaire was tested by using Cronbachs alpha and found to be .821 . As a result, it was found that third year ELT teacher trainees have mildly positive attitudes on environmental education. In addition, there were no statistically significant differences among the participants sex and their membership at environmental organizations on their attitudes towards environmental education and their tendency to use them in language education. The result of this study is significant for numerous stakeholders, including teacher education programs, Ministry of Education, state leaders and surrounding communities and families of English language learners in relation with the efforts to integrate environmental education to the ELT curriculum.