An Investigation of Prospective Teachers’ Attitudes Towards National Parks and Views on Ecology-Based Environmental Education

Abstract

In this study, it was aimed to determine prospective social studies and elementary education teachers’ attitudes towards national parks and views on ecology-based environmental education. In this study, which was conducted following the stated purpose, an educational practice was carried out in Termessos National Park (Antalya) for two days in 2018 with a total of 26 prospective teachers enrolled at faculty of education at Akdeniz University, of whom 11 from social studies education and 15 from elementary education. In the study, in which a mixed research design was employed, the “Attitude Towards National Parks Scale” developed by Deniş, Genç, and Demirkaya (2008) was used as a data collection tool. Pretest and posttest analyses of the data were conducted using SPSS to determine the effect of ecology-based environmental education given in the specified national park on the prospective teachers’ attitudes towards national parks. In the qualitative part of the study, the participants’ views on ecology-based environmental education were elicited through interviews conducted before and after the practice education with the help of the “interview form for ecology-based environmental education,” which was developed by the researchers. The data obtained were subjected to content analysis, which is one of the qualitative analysis techniques. The results revealed that the practice “Ecology-based Environmental Education in a National Park” positively affected the prospective teachers’ attitudes towards national parks and contributed positively to their views on ecology-based environmental education.

Trends in environmental education: A systematic review

“…Some studies in the literature aimed to emphasize the effectiveness of specific environmental education program (Aksut & Aydin, 2021;Ayaz et al, 2021;Bardecki & McCarthy, 2020;Corpuz et al, 2022;Fettahlioglu, 2018;Hamalosmanoglu et al, 2020;Junkaew et al, 2021;Nogales-Delgado & Encinar Martín, 2019;Sims et al, 2020;Sookngam et al, 2021;Wongchantra et al, 2022aWongchantra et al, , 2022b. While others tried to show a relation between environmental education and other variables (Afacan, 2020;Chen et al, 2020;Demirkaya et al, 2020;Kaya et al, 2021;Kilicoglu, 2021;Onal, 2020;Ongon et al, 2021;Praimee et al, 2022). Finally, a small number of studies were about review studies (Dasdemir, 2018;Tumer, 2021;Ulfah et al, 2020) related to environmental education and trends.…”

“…Particularly, Chen et al (2020) revealed that there are positive correlations between environmental education and learning outcomes, learning outcomes and environmental literacy, and environmental education and environmental literacy. Furthermore, Demirkaya et al (2020) showed that "ecology-based environmental education in national park" positively influenced student teachers' attitude towards national parks and positively influenced their understanding of ecological environmental education.…”

Digital Teaching Materials Development Containing Environmental Education Using Task Based Language Learning (TBLL)

“…Recent technological development has increased opportunities to intervene in nature which has become a significant pressure on the environment (Demirkaya, 2020). The natural environment in which all living things live has existed for many years without any problems in living things' interaction.…”