Abstract:

Young individuals’ environmental and agricultural awareness will have an undeniable effect on the life of future generations. Several research studies in related literature imply that people have misconceptions in agriculture. This paper includes a research investigating prospective elementary science teachers' understandings about agriculture and its preliminary work. In the preliminary work; understandings of prospective elementary teachers from different disciplines were investigated. Both studies were designed with a mixed method, where quantitative and qualitative techniques were used. In the preliminary study, a questionnaire about agricultural issues, developed by the researchers, was administered to three hundred and ten participants. Questionnaire and interviews were the basic data collection methods for this piece of the research study. Quantitative analysis of data collected via questionnaires displayed that prospective mathematics teachers were well informed about agriculture among the others. Then prospective social science teachers were better than science teachers. Based on the results of the preliminary study, prospective science teachers' case was investigated in the major study. Thirty prospective science teachers were participating in the research and they were asked to keep an electronic journal other than answering the questionnaire. Electronic journals included discussions on agricultural issues presented in the cases prepared by the researchers. Each case had a question to reflect and each participant was asked to reflect and discuss the cases in their journal. Three assertions about participants' understandings in agriculture were formed with the qualitative analysis of data from journals. Assertions imply that prospective science teachers participated in this research study did not have adequate understanding about the definition of agriculture and its social and global importance.

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