Examining the Relationship Between Pre-Service Teachers' Behaviors Towards Environmental Issues and Their Awareness

This research was designed in the relational screening model to examine the relationship between the awareness levels of pre-service teachers towards environmental issues and their behaviors towards environmental issues. 5 multiple-choice questions to determine their descriptive features, the "Awareness Scale for Environmental Issues" developed by Guven (2011) to measure their awareness of environmental issues, and the "Behavior Scale for Environmental Issues" to measure their behaviors on this were applied by the researcher to 129 pre-service teachers studying at Gazi Osmanpasa University, Faculty of Education, Department of Primary School Teaching in the 2019-2020 academic year. Numbers, percentage, mean, standard deviation were used as descriptive statistical methods in the evaluation of the data. T-test was used for comparison of quantitative continuous data between two independent groups and a one-way Anova test was used for comparison of quantitative continuous data between more than two independent groups. Scheffé's test was used after the Anova test as a complementary post-hoc analysis to determine the differences. The Pearson correlation and regression analysis were applied between the continuous variables of the study. As a result of the research, it was determined that the awareness of the pre-service primary school teachers about environmental issues was low and their behavior towards environmental issues was moderate. A low-level significant relationship was found between pre-service primary school teachers' awareness of environmental issues and their behaviors. As a result, it was concluded that as the awareness levels of primary school teachers towards environmental issues increased, their behaviors towards environmental issues increased positively.