SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER CANDIDATES’ SENSITIVITY AND AWARENESS LEVELS IN NATURE AND ENVIRONMENT EDUCATION

Abstract

As environment education gains importance in a changing and developing world, studies about this subject has beenincreasing every day. Nature and environment education is one of the most important subjects being studied.Environmental education applications are insufficient in the education faculties of our country’s universities. For nature andenvironmental education to reach its goals new approaches should be included in the curriculum. Many different teachingtechniques, including using field trips, can be used and new techniques can be developed.For this study, a field trip in which social studies teacher candidates had practical nature and environmental educationwas organized with 33 (20 female, 13 male) second-year teacher candidates studying Social Studies Education in NiğdeUniversity’s Faculty of Education. During the field trip, the researcher also used speaking circle technique with thecandidates. The purpose of the field trip is to determine the candidates’ awareness level about environmental pollution.First, candidates’ views on pollution factor on Çakıt River and its effects were taken. Later, students got detailed on-siteinformation about recycling by visiting plastic waste recycling, paper waste recycling and water waste recycling facilities.In this study, experimental design, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. No control group pre-test post-testmethod was used. Five open-ended questions were developed for the study. It was aimed to raise teacher candidates’awareness by teaching them behaviors, skills and values that they can pass on to the future generations.