Determining Primary School Candidate Teachers' Levels of Environmental Literacy

The core of environmental literacy is to answer questions related to our world and our relationship with it, to search and to find answers to these questions, and the way we use these answers. Environmental literacy can be defined as obtaining information related to environment, educating yourself in subjects related to environment, and directing yourself to act on this issue. An individual's attitude, affective disposition, cognitive skills towards environment and information about environment represents his environmental literacy. The aim of this study is to determine the environmental literacy levels of primary education candidate teachers who study at different grades. This study which uses a surveillance model includes 419 candidate teacher participants who study in the fall semester of 2012-2013 academic years. In this study, "Environmental Literacy Survey" which is prepared by Karatekin (2011) is used as data collection tool. This survey contains tests for affective disposition towards environment, environment behavior, environment knowledge, and environment cognitive skills. The results show that environmental literacy level of candidate teachers is moderate. It is found that candidate teachers' affective disposition towards environment is high, information about environment, attitudes towards environment and environment cognitive skills are moderate. It is found that environmental literacy levels of candidate teachers are significantly different based on their department and whether they took a course related to environment or not. Environmental literacy levels do not change significantly based on gender of candidate teachers and education levels of their parents. In addition, it is found that environmental literacy of candidate teacher's increase as levels of their curiosity about news and information about the environment increases. At the end of the study, in light of the obtained results, some suggestions are made for this study, researchers, and for future studies.