Analysis of Science Teacher Candidates’ Environmental Knowledge, Environmental Behaviorand Self-efficacy through a Project Called “Environment and Energy with Professional Science Education”

AbstractEnvironmental education can be defined as raising environmental consciousness among every segment of society, bringing for the awareness to environment-friendly, permanentand positive behavioral change. Individuals who are environment-friendly, aware of the environmental problems and seeking solutions when needed can be educated by the teachers who have sufficient knowledge and experience and know theimportance of environmental education. In line with this purpose, then a ture project titled as ‘Environment and Energy with Pro-Fe(Science)ssional Education’ has been put into action. As stated in the feedback of the participants, it has been of the opinion that this project is remarkable and useful in regards with supporting applied training and practice. In this context the purpose of this study is to identify the effect and permanence of the TUBITAK (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) project titled as ‘Environment and Energy with Pro-Fe(Science)ssional Education’ on environmental knowledge, environmental behavior and self-efficacy beliefs of environmental education. The study based on quantitative research was carried out in accordance with pre-test, post-test and retention test design. Participants of this study consist of 37 teacher candidates selected through purposeful sampling among 286 students, who applied to the project held between the dates 17th-23rd June, 2014. As data collection tools, “Environmental Knowledge Test” developed by Kışoğlu (2009), reliability co-efficient of which is calculated as (α) 0.64 and “Environmental Behavior Scale” with (α) 0.79, and “Self-Efficacy Beliefs Through Environmental Education Scale” developed by Özdemir (2009) with 0.76 were used. SPSS programme was used to analyze the data and One-way ANOVA for independent variable was applied to demonstrate the differences between the means cores. LSD was used for multiple comparison test. Data analyses reveal that there is a significant difference in favor of post-test and retention test as a result of pre-test, post-test and retention test analyses of the Environmental Knowledge Test, Environmental Behavior Scale and Self-Efficacy Beliefs Through Environmental Education Scale. In the other words, it has been observed that with the environmental education project, statistically significant increase was found in the participants’ environmental knowledge scores, environmental self-efficacy beliefs scores and environmental behavior scores. This case asserts that activities carried out and applied training are effective and permanent. It is expected that teacher candidates will use this experience in their professional and future life