Awareness about renewable energy of pre-service science teachers in Turkey

Abstract

Limited world fossil fuel reserves and the expectation that these reserves will soon be depleted, place increased importance on renewable energy resources. Therefore, it is highly critical to educate pre-service teachers, who will be bringing up future generations of school children, about renewable energy and resources. To that end, a 39 point questionnaire developed by Morgil et al. [1] have been applied to a total of 240 pre-service teachers (60 pre-service teachers each in first, second, third and fourth years) majoring in Elementary Science Teaching at a university in the Black Sea Region of Turkey, and their awareness of renewable energy topics were determined. The study has concluded that while no gender-based meaningful differences exist with respect to the awareness of pre-service teachers for renewable energy [t(238) = 0.789, p > .05], there are differences based on year-of-study [F(3,236) = 16.376, p < .05]. An analysis based on pre-service teachers' years of study has resulted in statistically meaningful (p < .05) differences being found, with respect to awareness for renewable energy, upon comparing third year students with first (p = .000), second (p = .000) and fourth (p = .015) year students, and upon comparing fourth year students with first year students (p = .002).