The impact of field trips on attitudes and behaviours related to sustainable environmental education

Abstract

Sustainability is a concept which is addressed with environment and development concepts and it aims the healthy transfer of natural resources to future generations. For these aims environmental education is regarded as an important tool of sustainable development. In this respect, various methods have become popular in recent years in order to endow individuals with sustainable environmental education. One of these methods is field trips. A field trip is a process in which students' abstract perceptions regarding the environment become concrete. In this research, the single-group pretest-posttest model, which aims to make measurements both before and after the experiment by applying an independent variable to a selected group, was employed. The sample of research consisted of 46 pre-service teachers in Ahi Evran University. Attitude and Behaviour Scale for Sustainable Environmental Education are used as data collection instruments. It was determined at the end of the research that the attitude and behaviour scores of the participant pre-service teachers had increased following the trip; however, the increase of attitude scores was not significant. Therefore, it could be stated that organizing field trips is the best way of instilling sustainable environmental consciousness to pre-service teachers. © IDOSI Publications, 2013.