Özet:

The purpose of the present study is to explore environmental literacy levels of geography teacher trainees and to investigate the impact of various variables on environmental literacy and its components (knowledge – affect – behaviour – cognitive skills). The study was carried out using survey method on 352 freshman, sophomore, junior and senior geography teacher trainees studying at the geography education departments of 5 different universities in Turkey during 20122013 academic year. “Environmental literacy survey” was used to explore their environmental literacy levels. This scale was composed of personal information form, scale for affective tendencies towards the environment, environmental behaviour scale, environmental knowledge scale and cognitive skills test. The data were analyzed using SPSS. To analyze the data, descriptive statistics, independent sample t test, oneway ANOVA and simple correlation were used. According to the findings of the study, the teacher trainees had moderate levels of environmental knowledge and behaviours; they had high levels of affective tendencies, yet their cognitive skills were low. When the mean scores obtained from these four components that make up environmental literacy are examined, it is seen that the teacher trainees had moderate levels of environmental literacy. In addition, an examination of the correlation between the components that form environmental literacy revealed that was a weak positive correlation between knowledge and affect; there was a moderate positive correlation between affect and behaviour, and there was a weak positive correlation between knowledge and skills. However, there was not a meaningful correlation between not only knowledge and behaviour but also between skills and behaviours. This study examined the impact of a number of variables (gender, grade, having taken environmental education courses, being a member of non-governmental organizations, how often the participants visit natural areas, how often they take part in environmental activities, the level of curiosity about the environment and the existence of family members with high levels of environmental sensitivity) on geography teacher trainees’ environmental literacy. As a result of this examination, it was found that gender, grade and having taken environmental education courses had no impact on the level of environmental literacy in geography teacher trainees. However, it was also found that the variable of gender had an impact on only affective tendency dimension of environmental literacy, and the variable of having taken environmental courses had an impact on knowledge and cognitive skills dimensions. On the other hand, being a member of non-governmental organizations, the frequency of taking part in environmental activities, the level of curiosity and the existence of family members with high levels of environmental sensitivity played a significant role on geography teacher trainees’ environmental literacy levels.

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