Abstract:

The aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge levels and attitudes towards environmental issues of candidate teachers. The study was conducted at survey model. The sampling consists of 405 teacher candidates who were studying in the spring term of the 2015-2016 academic years at Faculty of Education in Kastamonu University. The 405 participants of study were studying at five different undergraduate programs. These programs were Classroom Teaching, Turkish Teaching, Science Teaching, Pre-school Teaching and Elementary Mathematics Teaching. Environmental Issues Knowledge Test, which was developed by Güven (2013) and Attitude Scale towards Environmental Problems which, was developed by Şama (2003) were used as data gathering tools. The single direction variance analysis (ANOVA) was used for data analysis. According to the findings, there was a significant difference in favor of the participants, who already took the environmental education course (classroom teaching and science teaching candidate teachers), compared to the other teacher candidates not having this course. It was found that the knowledge level of classroom teaching and science teaching candidate teachers about the environmental issues were higher than the other candidate teachers. Moreover, the candidate teachers, who took Environmental Education course at the university, have more positive attitudes to environment. Upon these conclusions, it is recommended that including the faculties of education at first, all of the undergraduate program of the universities should have Environmental Education course or similar courses in their programs.

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