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

This study provides insight into the effectiveness of teaching sustainable living courses in higher education. Encouragingly, most of pre-service science teachers identified valid features of an ecological footprint. Having said that, some features of the findings clearly indicate areas where further learning would be beneficial.

It is concluded that food makes the biggest and that transportation makes the smallest contribution to the ecological footprint of the pre-service teachers. However, housing and goods/services affect ecological footprint in very similar levels. The ecological footprints of the pre-service science teachers turned out to be more than the ecological footprint of the world per-capita. This situation showed that the pre-service teachers should make important changes in their lifestyles in order to diminish their ecological footprints. Furthermore, this situation underlies the importance of the negative impacts that the pre-service science teachers impose on the world.

While the results of the study indicate that the greatest contribution to the ecological footprints of the pre-service teachers comes from the food component, Janis (2007) in a study among the students of Ohio University, reported that the greatest contribution comes from the energy and transportation component. In a study carried out by Akilli et al. (2008) among the students of Akdeniz University, the students' footprint was found to be 4.52 hectares, and the greatest contribution was due to the wastes component.

It is remarkable that the pre-service teachers had no idea on this concept before the research. In most countries, the ecological footprint analysis that is considered to be the indicator of the sustainable life was known approximately 14 years ago; it was not known by the pre-service teachers who participated in the research in Turkey. This demonstrates there is a significant backwardness in our country in this area. This study is important to reveal these shortcomings, even if it is for a small sample.

It was observed that vocabularies of the pre-service science teachers developed, and their vision got richer after the research. The pre-service teachers have become aware of their negative effects on the world. In addition, they noticed we have to give back to nature what we take from it. They noticed that unless we give back what we take from the nature, there would not be a biological area to live on any more. This circumstance has been effective for the pre-service teachers to digitally learn the impact of their lifestyles on sustainable life. Generally we use phrases like, “we harm, we pollute,” while we mention the impacts of human beings on the nature, but we cannot answer the questions, “How much do we pollute? How much will we harm?” Because the concept of the ecological footprint uncovers our impact on the nature and shows us concrete values, it is effective to develop sustainable standards. In this way, the pre-service teachers who were educated will demonstrate this knowledge and their manners at schools where they will teach; and hence, these pre-service teachers will play an important role in maintaining the future of our world in the sustainable life area. Ryu & Brody (2006) found that sustainable behaviours that can be measured with an ecological footprint show positive changes, and this concurs with our finding. Keles (2007) reported that when the ecological footprint is used as an educational tool, the participants’ awareness of and attitudes and behaviours towards sustainable life exhibited positive changes. Wada, Izumi & Mashiba (2007) reported that ecological footprint is an effective instrument in changing our lifestyles and providing ecological sustainability, and Wackernagel & Rees (1996) state that through in-school and out of-school activities (for example, work on energy and matter flow in nature, doing experiments related to sustainable lifestyle and supporting the simultaneously taught mathematics, biology and physics courses with concrete local applications) the concept of footprint should be consolidated. This study provided insight into how pre-service students feel about environmental sustainability and the need to take action for reducing ecological footprint. Sustainable living applications should be carried out at other levels of education with different variables. Additional research is needed to determine if graduate courses can produce permanent alterations in lifestyle or if they have only a short-lived effect.