Development of attitude scale in the context of sustainable environmental education

Abstract

The rapid disappearance of natural resources and residential areas as a result of industrial and technological improvements necessitated precautions to be taken in this issue. In fact, the idea of sustainable development arose within this context. The notion of sustainable development, which started to gain importance specifically after the mid-1980s, was defined as "the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" in the 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Throughout time, this idea promptly tended towards the education of sustainable environment and became the contemporary dominant view. Therefore, environmental education is considered as a significant mean in the sustainable development. Within this context, the aim of this study is to develop a valid and reliable scale in order to determine teacher candidates' attitudes in relation to environment in the framework of sustainable environmental education. A pilot study was conducted with 400 teacher candidates who are studying in the programs of Social Sciences Education, Elementary Science Education and Primary Education in the Department of Elementary Education at the Ahi Evran University. As a result of exploratory factor analysis, it was found that the scale has 6 factors and the internal consistency coefficient is 0.904.