Pre-service science teachers’ views of the ecological footprint: The starting-points of sustainable living

Education for Sustainability was proposed in 1997 in the Thessaloniki Declaration (UNESCO, 1997a) as a single message of hope for the future (Knapp, 1997). The message of Thessaloniki was that education, first and foremost, should be in the center of the international, regional and national agendas (UNESCO, 1997b). To make sustainability a reality, Mathis Wackernagel & William Rees developed an Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) as a measurement tool to determine whether humanity’s demands remain within the capabilities of the globe’s natural capital (Wackernagel et al., 1999). With documented declines in the biophysical state of the planet, the ecological footprint analysis has been promoted as a policy guide and planning tool for sustainability (Wackernagel et al., 1997).

The ecological footprint is an indicator of sustainability that converts consumption and waste production into units of equivalent land area (Flint, 2001). The ecological footprint is a model and teaching tool for measuring the ecological impact of nations and individuals (Wackernagel & Rees, 1996). Ecological footprinting is a stimulating way to introduce students to some of the less obvious but crucial dimensions of human ecology and to familiarize them with some of the ecological implications of a consumer society.

Over the last 30 years, the discussion on critical dimensions of sustainability in higher education has continued through the signing of multiple international declarations, the implementation of national programs and specific initiatives within universities (Clugston & Calder, 1999; Wright, 2002). However, they have mainly focused on developing curriculum, teaching and training students on the principles of sustainability. While there is no consensus on how best to actually teach sustainability at the university level, one approach, called problem-based learning, has recently received attention (Jucker, 2002; Steinemann, 2003; Warburton, 2003). The ecological footprint concept provides a simple framework for understanding the ecological bottom-line of sustainability. Putting sustainability in simple and concrete terms helps to build common understanding and set a framework for action (Wackernagel, 1994).

When the related literature is reviewed, there are many studies showing that the ecological footprint is an effective tool in promoting sustainable-life related knowledge, attitudes and behaviours (Meyer, 2004; Ryu & Brody, 2006; Wada, Izumi & Mashiba, 2007), detecting non-sustainable life styles of schools and individuals (Dawe, Vetter & Martin, 2004; Janis, 2007) and raising students’ awareness of the global and regional effects of their consumption patterns. However, there are few studies dealing with the importance of education and the measurement of the ecological footprint for national sustainable life (Keles, 2007; Akilli, Kemahli, Okudan, & Polat, 2008; Erdogan & Tuncer, 2009).

The present study is based on the belief that higher education has an important role to play in promoting the development of knowledge, skills and values, and the first group of people who should be informed about the concepts relating to sustainable development should be the student teachers that will assume great responsibility to shape the vision for the future. Hence, there is a need to determine their knowledge level of the issue. In this study, the goal is to produce well-informed science education pre-service teachers who can critically think about sustainable living and the ecological footprint and can therefore contribute to development of sustainability principles in their school and society. In this study, ecological footprints of pre-service science teachers, who will educate future generations, were calculated in order for them to see their effects on the world. The consumption category that mostly affects the ecological footprint was determined. Views of the pre-service teachers about the ecological footprint were researched. This study is important since teachers play pivotal roles in educating young people; hence, taking their views about sustainable development and training them is important to forward these studies to the future generations.