Effects of Gender and Grade Level on Environmental Moral Reasoning Patterns

The purpose of this study was to examine environmental moral reasoning patterns of 120 pre-service science teachers together with the effects of gender and grade level on these reasoning. For data collection, participants were asked to write their concerns about four environmental problems (i.e., deforestation, electronic waste, oil spills, global warming) each of which were presented as local and global cases. Content analysis was performed on the participants' written statements and frequencies of the statements reflecting ecocentric, anthropocentric, and non-environmental moral reasoning were calculated to be used in descriptive and inferential analyses. While analyses did not reveal statistically significant difference between environmental moral reasoning patterns of males and females, grade level was found to have statistically significant effect. In addition to general patterns in pre-service science teachers' environmental moral reasoning, findings were also interpreted for local and global environmental problem dichotomy. Implications for environmental education were discussed.