Abstract:

It is known that the pre-school period is a critical time frame for internalizing environmental values. It is believed that teachers who serve as exemplary role models should possess ecological citizenship by having self-efficacy in environmental education and awareness of environmental ethics to facilitate students' awareness of the environment. Based on this, this research aims to determine the levels of environmental education self-efficacy, awareness of environmental ethics, and ecological citizenship among pre-school teacher education students and to explore how these factors influence each other. In this study, the correlational survey model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The study's sample group consists of 254 pre-school teacher education students who were enrolled in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades during the 2020-2021 academic year at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University. The data of this study were collected using "Environmental Education Self-Efficacy Scale," "Environmental Ethics Awareness Scale" and "Ecological Citizenship Scale." The study results indicated that pre-school teaching students have a high level of environmental education self-efficacy level, a very high perception of environmental ethics awareness, and a medium ecological citizenship level. It has been found that there is a moderate and significant relationship between students' self-efficacy in environmental education, awareness of environmental ethics, and ecological citizenship. When the predictive effects of environmental education self-efficacy and environmental ethics awareness perceptions of students on their ecological citizenship were examined, it was noted that environmental education self-efficacy and environmental ethics awareness perceptions significantly predicted total ecological citizenship scores. One of the study's recommendations is to add courses that support students' self-efficacy in ecological education and awareness of environmental ethics to the content of undergraduate education programs. It is suggested that incorporating such courses would enhance these aspects and contribute to students' ecological citizenship.

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