Turkish pre-service primary school teachers' environmental attitudes: Effects of gender and grade level

Research Design

The present study is dealing with Turkish pre-service primary school teachers’ environmental attitudes and how their attitudes change with gender and grade level. For the study, survey method was utilized, since this method allows determination of sample characteristics for a large group in a very short time. Besides, surveys can be used effectively to determine “the attitudes, opinions and perceptions of persons of interest to the researcher” (Borg, Gall & Gall, 1993: p.21). The data obtained from this study will provide a picture of Turkish pre-service primary school teachers’ environmental attitudes.

Sample

A total of 2067 pre-service primary school teachers (1296 females and 771 males) attending primary school departments of nine universities in Turkey participated in the study. The sample consists of 629 first year, 510 second year, 500 third year and 428 fourth year students. When considering the mother’s level of education, the descriptive analysis revealed that the most common level of education is primary school education (f = 1172, 56.7%) and high school graduation (f = 230, 11.1%). Besides, 17.9% of pre-service teachers responded that their mothers are not literate. While statistics change for father’s level of education the general picture does not change too much. Primary school graduation (f = 806, 39.0%) is still the most common level of education, followed by high school graduation (f = 470, 22.7%) and university graduation (f = 361, 17.5%). The demographic characteristics of participants are summarized in Table 1.

Characteristics	f	P
Gender
Male	771	37.3
Female	1296	62.7
Grade Level
1st Grade	629	30.4
2nd Grade	510	24.7
3th Grade	500	24.2
4th Grade	428	20.7
Mother’s Graduate Level
Not Literate	368	17.9
Primary School Graduate	1172	56.7
Secondary School Graduate	183	8.9
High School Graduate	230	11.2
University Graduate	102	4.9
Post-Graduate	2	.1
Father’s Graduate Level
Not Literate	78	3.8
Primary School Graduate	806	39.0
Secondary School Graduate	330	16.0
High School Graduate	470	22.7
University Graduate	361	17.5
Post-Graduate	15	.7

Table 1. Demographic Characteristics of Participants

Research Instruments

Environmental Attitude Questionnaire. Turkish pre-service primary school teachers’ environmental attitudes were determined by administering ‘Environmental Attitude Questionnaire’ developed by Tuncer, Ertepinar, Tekkaya and Sungur (2005). This questionnaire includes 45-Likert-type questions dispersed into 4 subscales; awareness of environmental problems (AEP) includes 12 questions, general attitudes towards solutions (GAS) includes 15 questions, awareness of individual responsibility (AIR) includes 13 questions, and awareness of national environmental problems (ANEP) includes 6 questions. Tuncer et al. reported the internal consistency of item sets to be .58, .65, .77, .55, respectively, using Cronbach alpha. In the present study the Cronbach alpha values are calculated as .65, .72, .70, .58 for each subscale respectively.

Procedure

Data of the study were collected from the participants on a voluntary basis during the fall semester of 2010-2011 academic year. At all occasions, the researchers were present throughout the data collection process. After a brief introduction to research, the questionnaires were distributed to participants. Participants were instructed to think about each question before answering them. It took approximately 25 minutes to complete the questionnaire.

Data Analysis

Primary school pre-service teachers responded to EAQ using a five-point scale of strongly disagree (1), disagree (2), neutral (3), agree (4) and strongly agree (5). The scores from the items on each component were aggregated to provide individual scores on each component. As for the statements representing a negative attitude, the scores were reversed. For the representation of the data the ‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ responses, ‘disagree’ and ‘strongly disagree’ responses were combined to give the proportions of students who affirmed the data. Statistical analyses included tabulation of frequency distributions and descriptive statistics of pre-service teachers’ responses to the EAQ. Independent samples t-test and analysis of variance were conducted to examine the difference between genders and grade level, respectively.