|
Makale Özeti:
|
According to environmental education scholars, most people do not use their environmental
awareness to behave proenvironmentally. Scholars therefore believe that there is a gap between
humans‟ cognitive and behavioural patterns. On one hand, a plethora of factors, such
as religion, culture, self-efficacy, emotions, and so on, may be responsible for this gap. On
the other hand, the ways we try to create environmental awareness may be problematic. The
present study addresses the latter issue. Instead of conveying shallow environmental information,
we foresaw that an action-oriented program would provide fruitful conclusions. To
this end, the aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a project-based learning
environment as an action-oriented method for developing proenvironmental behaviours. 33
student teachers, who took project-based Environmental Science course, in the 3rd year of
Elementary Science Teacher Training Program at Ahi Evran University, Turkey, voluntarily
participated in the present study and responded the questionnaires. A mixed design with
quantitative and qualitative methods was used for the data analysis. The qualitative part
consisted of a questionnaire including two open-ended questions. Content analysis was employed
to examine these data. In the quantitative analyses, descriptive statistics, t-tests, and
ANOVA were used. The findings of present study suggest that the project-based learning
environment caused positive changes in student teachers‟ behaviours regarding environmental
protection. The paper concludes with a discussion about the relationships between
environmental education and science, socio-cultural issues, and educational implications.
|