Preschool Teacher Candidates’ Sensitivities And Attitudes Towards Environment

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of an enriched environmental education course on
the attitudes, behaviors and sensitivities of 4th grade teacher candidates who study in
Undergraduate Program of Preschool Education. A pretest-posttest control group design and quasiexperimental
design has been used in this study. Based on this method, the workgroup was formed
of 77 teacher candidates, of whom 39 in experimental group and 38 of whom in control group.
“Enriched Environmental Education for Children” course was conducted on the experimental group
for 14 weeks. Environmental Sensitivity Scale for University students has been applied to teacher
candidates simultaneously as pretest-posttest. In addition to this, “Scale of Affective Tendencies
towards Environment” and “Environmental Behavior Scale” were also used within the last week of
course. It was seen that environmental sensitivity of teacher candidates who took the course, was
significantly more influenced than environmental sensitivity of teacher candidates that did not take
the course.