An assessment of Turkish elementary teachers in the context of education for sustainable development

2016-06-01
Sağdıç, Ali
Şahin, Elvan
The purpose of the current study is to describe beliefs, perceived barriers and teaching strategy preference of elementary teachers with respect to education for sustainable development. The sample of research survey consisted of 211 elementary teachers who are also participant of projects on environmental education entitled Green Pack and Eco-schools. The data were collected by three different scale entitled “beliefs on education for sustainable development scale”, “barriers towards education for sustainable development scale” and “techniques in education for sustainable development scale”. Items of the scales were examined taking into account mean scores, standard deviation, frequencies and percentages. Results revealed that teachers perceive some of the condition such as curriculum, class size, and lack of instructional materials as barriers for education for sustainable development. Despite these barriers, teachers have favorable beliefs regarding education for sustainable development. These beliefs were in line with the standards portrayed by international reports. In addition, it was argued that teachers’ beliefs may be shaped by the educational projects they participated in.
International Electronic Journal of Environmental Education

Suggestions

A Closer look into Turkish elementary teachers regarding education for sustainable development
Sağdıç, Ali; Şahin, Elvan; Department of Elementary Science and Mathematics Education (2013)
The main aims of the current study are five fold (1) to develop a valid scale for measuring beliefs about education for sustainable development, (2) to adapt the values on sustainable development scale to the context of Turkey, (3) to explore elementary teachers’ familiarity with and understanding of sustainable development, (4) to determine the elementary teachers’ values on sustainable development, (5) to investigate their beliefs about education for sustainable development. In addition, the barriers elem...
An Investigation of preservice middle school mathematics teachers’ formative assessment approaches through lesson planning
Kaplan, Gözde; Haser, Çiğdem; Department of Elementary Science and Mathematics Education (2015)
The aim of this study was to investigate the views and practices of early childhood teachers on differentiation. In order to explore the research questions, 19 pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers of an International Baccalaureate (IB) world school in Turkey were interviewed about differentiation, their written curriculum documents were analyzed, and the classrooms were observed. This study was designed and conducted as a qualitative case study. As the case, an authorized International Baccalaureate P...
Pre-service classroom teachers’ perceived competencies on education for sustainable development /
Soysal, Neşe; Akar, Hanife; Department of Educational Sciences (2016)
The purpose of this study was to analyze pre-service classroom teachers’ perceived competencies on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). For this purpose, first, attitudes of pre-service classroom teachers towards Sustainable Development (SD) were examined; then, their perceived competencies regarding ESD were investigated. Finally, the curriculum of classroom teachers was analyzed to see if it reflected learning opportunities for development of the competencies. In this study, a mixed methods sequen...
Identifying essential qualities for elementary teachers of the 21st century and effectiveness of elementary teacher education program for developing these qualities
Akın, Sibel; Ok, Ahmet; Department of Educational Sciences (2017)
The purpose of this study was, first, to investigate the essential qualities for elementary teachers of the 21st century based on the perceptions of the teacher educators, the pre-service and in-service elementary teachers, and the authorities of the MoNE and the CHE in Turkey. Drawing on this, the study further aimed to explore the effectiveness of the elementary teacher education program in Turkey for how well it develops those desired essential qualities, as perceived by the in-service elementary teacher...
Science teachers as ESD educators: an outdoor ESD model for developing systems thinking skills
Karaarslan, Güliz; Teksöz, Gaye; Department of Elementary Education (2016)
The main purpose of this thesis is to explore how science teachers could become Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) educators. The study was conducted in five stages which are: gap analysis, developing systems thinking skills measurement tools, designing an outdoor ESD course, conducting a pilot study, and conducting the main study. Through gap analysis, systems thinking was found out to be a required competence for science teachers to become ESD educators. In the second stage, twelve systems thinki...
Citation Formats
A. Sağdıç and E. Şahin, “An assessment of Turkish elementary teachers in the context of education for sustainable development,” International Electronic Journal of Environmental Education, pp. 141–155, 2016, Accessed: 00, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/76036.