Teachers Candidates’ Awareness of Sustainable Development

Abstract

Today, it is known that rapidly developing industrialization and urbanization seriously threaten the future of humanity. This situation brings to mind the concept of ‘sustainable development’. The aim of this study is to determine the “Sustainable Development’ awareness of prospective teachers in different branches. Survay method was used in the study. The sample of the study consists of 175 pre-service teachers who study in five different branches of the Faculty of Education of a university located in the Eastern Anatolia region in the fall semester of 2018-2019 academic year. 35 students from each of the departments of Science Teaching, Primary School Teaching, Elementary Mathematics Teaching, Preschool Teaching and Social Sciences Teaching participated in the study. The data of the study were collected with a 5-point Likert scale type of 21 items. Prior to this study, the pilot study was conducted with 121 pre-service teachers from different branches of the sample and the cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient was found 0,81. From the parametric tests One way ANOVA and Tukey tests were used to analyze the data obtained from the study. As a result of the study, it was determined that the highest mean score in terms of sustainable development awareness belongs to the prospective teachers studying in the Science Teaching Department and the lowest mean score belongs to the prospective teachers studying in the Mathematics Teaching Department. In the study, it was found that there was no statistically significant difference between the sustainable development awareness of Science, Classroom and Social Studies teacher candidates. Adding courses related to sustainable development to the pre-service teachers’ curriculum are among the suggestions of the study.