Perception of Ecological Literacy in Education: A Scale Development Study

Abstract

The increase in the world population day by day affects the balance of the living world, nature, and environment. Due to unawareness and misuse, the emergence of some environmental imbalances causes the formation of ecological problems. In order to prevent the emergence of these problems or to combat them, everyone in the education process should have an awareness level of ecological literacy. The aim of the research conducted in this direction is to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool for determining the ecological literacy levels of teachers. Within the framework of the purpose of the research, a literature review on ecology and ecological literacy was conducted. An item pool of 96 items was created. Language, meaning and content validity of the items forming the trial scale form was ensured. The data of the research were obtained with the participation of 879 teachers working in public schools in Turkey. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed on the obtained data. The final ecological literacy scale consists of three different components: cognitive (α=.84), affective (α=.87), and behavioral (α=.92) attitudes. According to the results of the analysis, it can be said that the scale developed is reliable enough to measure teachers’ ecological literacy attitudes.