From Awareness to Attitude and Behavior? Relationships among Pre-Service Science Teachers’ Awareness of Sustainable Development, Attitudes and Behaviors towards Environmental Issues

This research aims to explore relationships among science teacher candidates’ awareness about sustainable development, attitudes and behaviors against environmental problems. For this purpose, initially, pre-service science teachers’ (PSTs) awareness about sustainable development, attitudes and behaviours towards environmental problems were determined. Then, the relation-ships among PSTs’ awareness about sustainable development, attitudes and behaviours towards environmental problems were explored. In the current study, correlational research method was conducted. The sample of research were 712 pre-service science teachers from four different public universities in Istanbul,Turkey. The data were collected with 3 different data collection tools which are ‘Sustainable Development Awareness Scale’, ‘Environmental Problems Attitude Scale’ and ‘Environmental Problems Behavior Scale’. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation analysis were conducted in data analysis. Results showed that PSTs’ awareness about sustainable devel-opment and attitudes towards environmental issues are high level while their behaviours towards environmental problems are medium level. Furthermore, both the relationship between PSTs’ awareness of sustainable development and PSTs’ attitudes against environmental problems and the relationship between PSTs’ attitudes towards environmental issues and their behaviours towards environmental issues are positively directed medium level. In addition, the relationship between PSTs’ awareness of sustainable development and PSTs’ behaviors against environmental problems is positively directed low level. This research is crucial in terms of provides information about PSTs’ awareness of sustainable development, attitudes and behaviours toward environmental issues to researchers, educators, curriculum designers for teachership programs, academicians and educa-tional policy makers.