An Investigation of the Relationship Between Preschool Teachers' Critical Thinking Tendencies and their Awareness of Environmental Ethics

Preschool teachers are key actors who engage directly with children during the early childhood period.. Teachers are the designers and organizers of activities related to the environment in addition to covering a wide range of topics. Their attitudes and awareness have the potential to influence activities and children. It is important that activities prepared for the environment are organized with an ethical perspective. Developing an ethical awareness in the field of environment requires many skills within the scope of critical thinking tendencies. This study was conducted to examine the relationship between preschool teachers' critical thinking dispositions and their environmental ethics awareness. The research was designed with a quantitative method and planned with a correlational survey model. Data were collected from 312 preschool teachers who were determined by convenience and snowball sampling methods from teachers working in the central districts of Adana, Türkiye, on a voluntary basis in the 2023-2024 academic year. The Personal Information Form, the Critical Thinking Tendency Scale and the Environmental Ethics Awareness Scale were used to collect the data. Normality analyses were performed on the data, outliers were reviewed, and correlation and regression analyses were performed on 296 data points. As a result of the analyses, it was concluded that there was a positive and significant relationship between preschool teachers' critical thinking dispositions and their environmental ethical awareness, and that teachers' critical thinking dispositions predicted their environmental ethical awareness. These findings were interpreted and discussed in light of the existing literature