The Relationship between Environmental Moral Reasoning and Environmental Attitudes of Pre-Service Science Teachers

The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between environmental moral reasoning patterns and environmental attitudes of 120 pre-service science teachers. Content analysis was carried out on participants’ written statements regarding theirconcerns about the presented environmental problems and the statements were labeled as ecocentric, anthropocentric, and non-environmental according to their meanings. Then, descriptive and inferential analyses were conducted on the calculated frequencies of each moral consideration category and participants’ responses to Environmental Attitudes Scale. The results revealed a significant positive correlation between ecocentric moral reasoning and environmental attitudes, whereas there was not a statistically significant relationship between neither of anthropocentric nor non-environmental moral reasoning and environmental attitudes. Findings of the study support the argument that an environmental ethic, which extends moral consideration beyond human beings to the nature as a whole, is necessary to overcome many of the environmental problems.