Abstract
This study aimed to investigate preservice preschool teachers' opinions on environmental problems and their suggestions of solution. This study conducted through phenomenological research design. The study group consisted of 62 senior preservice teachers studying Preschool Teacher Education at a public university in South-eastern Anatolia. Eight semi-structured open-ended questions were asked to preservice teachers as data collection tool. The data were transferred to the electronic environment and content analysis was made with the NVivo11 program. According to the results, it was observed that the majority of preservice teachers didn’t take a course related to the environment during their education, almost half of them didn’t participate in any environmental activities, and the most of them did not have membership in any NGO’s related to environment. It was identified that preservice teachers considered global warming as the main global-scale environmental problem, and air, water and soil pollution as other major environmental issues in Turkey. Additionally, the study showed that preservice teachers regarded human factor as the main reason of environmental issues, and that natural environment would be harmed and human life would be challenged as a result of environmental issues. In the solution of environmental issues, the study showed that raising awareness, taking responsibility and receiving education were seen necessary.
Highlights
Today, many factors such as the rapid population growth, industrialization and reduced natural resources generate various global environmental issues
Case study research method was used in this study, which aims to identify the opinions of the preservice preschool teachers on environmental problems and possible solutions, in order to identify the Investigation of Preservice Preschool Teachers’ Views On Environmental Problems / Doğan & Simsar individual perceptions and opinions of the participants directly towards environmental issues, as well as to understand and explain the current situations
The demographic information of the participants shows that the majority of preservice preschool teacher are female (87.1%) and graduated from Girls’ Vocational High Schools (45.2%), and the rest of them graduated from Anatolian High Schools (27.4%) and General High Schools (22.6%)
Summary
Many factors such as the rapid population growth, industrialization and reduced natural resources generate various global environmental issues. Those are related to humans’ unconscious behaviour against environment and environmental problems. It is, assumed that the biggest danger of environmental issues is that they are at global scale (Aydın & Kaya, 2011; Harris, 2012; Yücel & Morgil, 1998). The author stated that the educational institutions would contribute to the development of social consciousness and the development of more environmentally friendly individuals with the responsibilities they would undertake in this regard
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