The effect of project-based learning on pre-service teachers environmental knowledge, attitude and behaviour

The rising interest in environmental literacy and education for sustainability has created expectations that timely, accurate content should be taught to the primary, secondary as well as teacher education curriculum. The learning context should provide opportunities for students to develop critical thinking skill, problem solving and values. Project-based learning approaches that emphasize student learning may be a key to the successful development of good citizenship. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of a project-based learning on students' environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. As part of the course requirements students were asked to develop a web-quest on climate change and to identify suitable topics in the curriculum for the integration of climate change. The topic on climate change was chosen since global climate change is a challenging topic to teach and learn and the teaching is flawed through omission, simplification and misrepresentation. A one group pre-test post-test design was employed for the study. Data were collected from the 173 students enrolled in the chemistry teaching methods course through questionnaires containing true-false items to measure factual knowledge about climate change and Likert-type items (Environmental Concern Scale and Pro-Environmental Behaviours) designed to assess the degree of environmental concern and readiness in pro-environmental behaviours. Analysis of the data showed that the students performed significantly better in the post-tests than pre-tests for all the three variables investigated. The results support the notion that adopting the project-based learning in the chemistry methods course could enhance students' knowledge, attitudes and behavior towards environment