Measuring the environmental literacy of teachers

* To whom correspondence should be addressed The crucial role that teachers ’ environmental literacy plays in realising the goals of environmental education and the importance of the ability, to determine their level of environmental literacy, are argued. A measuring instrument was developed in this regard and was applied to a sample of teachers. An analysis of the results revealed that the instrument meets the necessary psychometric requirements and that it can be considered a valid and reliable instrument to measure the level of environmental literacy of teachers. The research also revealed interesting results regarding the relationship between the level of teachers ’ environmental literacy and their field of academic training, accompanying learning area involvement, and general environmental education training. Introduction and background The potential of environmental literacy as a vehicle to realise the edu-cational agenda of sustainable development cannot be over-empha-sized. According to Disinger and Roth (1992:165) environmental literacy is a prerequisite to maintaining and improving the quality o