Abstract:

Children’s attitudes and their resulting behavior are significantly shaped during the period of primary school age. This is also true for attitudes about environmental issues. It is, therefore up to primary school teachers to assist the proper development of children’s pro-environmental attitudes through an effective implementation of Environmental Education (which should however begin in nursery school). The teachers’ own knowledge and attitude, acquired and positively shaped during the course of their studies at the Faculty of Education should be the main “drive” in this case. Only a sufficiently environmentally literate teacher would be able to inspire their pupils well and effectively for environmental education. The paper consists results of the research conducted among pre-service teachers of primary school in the Czech republic. The quantitative research aims to determine the current status of the selected aspects of environmental literacy amongst students of primary teacher training and to trace statistically significant differences between different groups of students. The quantitative research further investigates a correlation between the observed environmental literacy and selected indicators of the students’ socio-demographic backgrounds. The research tool (questionnaire) used during the research at the year 2014 consists of three dimensions – knowledge, attitudes and behavior. This respect a definition of the environmental literacy that was published by North American Association for Environmental Education at 2011. The data was analyzed using advanced statistical methods and most interesting results are presented in the paper.

Keywords:

Environmental literacy, pre-service teachers, primary school, environmental education.