TEACHER CANDİDATES’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS: THE EXAMPLE OF TURKEY

The aim of this study is to categorize the attitudes of university students towards environmentalproblems by cluster analysis and to analyze the attitudes of each formed category accordingto different variables. While the universe of this study involves the programmes bound to theprimary school departments from eight different universities taking place in different citiesof Turkey, “727” teachers candidates having education in these programmes constitute thesample. 54% of the university students involved in this study are male, and the 46% of them arefemale. The data of this study are gathered by personal information surveys and the scale ofenvironmental attitude surveys. After the item analysis and cluster analysis are applied, Likert Scale of 29 items was developed from draft scale of 30 items. For the whole scale Cronbachalfa coefficient was founded as 0,733. As a result of the analyses, it was determined that theattitudes of the university students towards environmental problems were grouped under “3”categories/clusters and each category indicates different statistical results in accordance withthe independent variables.