Pre-service Teachers’ Hope about Climate Change: Do Gender and Major Make a Difference?

Abstract

The scope of the research was two-fold: (1) to determine climate change hope of pre-service teachers enrolled in three majors; (2) to investigate the effect of major and gender on their hope about climate change. The data of the study, which followed the survey method, were gathered utilizing the “Climate Change Hope Scale - CCHS”. First, the data from 336 pre-service teachers were used to assess whether the Turkish version of the CCHS was valid and reliable. The results indicated that it could be used as a valid instrument to measure pre-service teachers’ hope about climate change. The reliability coefficient was found to be .82. The CCHS was then administered to 859 pre-service teachers enrolled at different universities in Turkey. The data were analyzed using two-way ANOVA, one-way ANOVA, and contrast command. A statistically significant difference in climate change hope between female and male pre-service teachers enrolled in science education was found, in favor of females. However, simple effects in the other majors were not significant, indicating that for pre-service teachers enrolled in both primary school education and pre-school education, females and males had similar climate change hope scores.