Abstract:
Students' knowledge of environmental issues and biodiversity will affect their perspectives on the
environment. The concrete steps to become a conscious individual will play an important role. In order
to gain this awareness, students should be educated from the elementary school years. Therefore,
primary school teachers have a big duty. The aim of the study is to determining difference the opinions
of primary school teacher candidates about biodiversity. For this purpose, Attitudes and Thoughts on
Decreasing Biodiversity Scale developed by Soysal (2012) was used in the study conducted according
to quantitative research model. The scale was applied to a total of 319 primary school teachers of 1st
,
2
nd, 3rd and 4th grades in the provinces of Nevşehir and Kırşehir. SPSS 22 software was used to analyse
the data. With the analysis of the obtained data, it was concluded that the attitudes of the prospective
teachers did not show a significant difference in terms of school, age and class, but showed a
significant difference in terms of gender. The views of primary school teacher candidates in terms of
various variables. The results yielded a significant difference with regard to gender variable. The views
of female teacher candidates are higher than male teacher candidates. In line with the obtained
results, it is suggested that the curriculum for undergraduate students be arranged in a way that
enables them to have positive attitudes towards biodiversity and to have knowledge about
biodiversity. In addition, activities that will enable teachers to enrich their lessons can be organized
both in the curriculum and in-class applications in order to raise awareness about biodiversity starting
from basic education.
