Education for sustainability has been portrayed as an agent that enables people to develop the knowledge, values, and skills in order to engage in activities that will improve the quality of life now and without damaging the planet for the future (Council for Environmental Education, 1998). This conceptualization of education for sustainability encourages the researchers and educators to act upon the values, attitudes and behaviors of individuals towards sustainable life styles. Furthermore, to achieve a great transition towards sustainable life styles it is crucially needed to change human values, attitudes, and behaviors (Leiserowitz, Kates, and Parris, 2005). Some researchers (Tosunoglu, 1993; Stapp and Polunin, 1991) indicated that everyday decisions from purchasing food produced locally to using energy saving bulbs plays important roles in shaping the future of the planet. Stapp and Polunin (1991) advocated that local actions and personal decisions can and often do have vital ramifications on the quality of the environment. Furthermore, these authors added that nurturing a world view based on this fact stimulates individuals to establish their own futures and help them to bring about solutions to current and potential problems threatening the quality of life. In this context, it is important to understand the nature of behaviors toward sustainable life styles when creating green curriculums towards sustainable development. In preparing individuals to become active citizens toward a better and self-sustainable world, the graduates of Faculty of Education have a crucially important responsibility (Summers, Corney and Childs, 2004). Education for sustainable development in the teacher education programs could not discard to prepare future teachers to effectively teach about sustainability related issues. Since young people are educated through the guidance of teachers, future teachers should be well equipped with the necessary skills and understanding in order to overcome the obstacles toward a sustainable world (Alkis and Ozturk, 2007). In the light of this literature review, the present study aimed to determine attitudes and behaviors toward sustainable life styles, and environmental values of pre-service teachers who have an important responsibility in preparing pupils to become active citizens toward a better and self-sustainable world. Furthermore, significant predictors of pre-service teachers’ environmental values, attitudes towards sustainability, and behaviors toward sustainable life styles were investigated.

A total of 688 students from the departments of Elementary Education, Secondary Science and Mathematics Education, Foreign Language Education, and Computer Education at Middle East Technical University participated in this study. The data were collected in classroom environment in February-June of 2008 by administration of Attitudes towards Sustainability Scale (Kagawa, 2007) (one item in multiple-choice format and 13 items in five-point Likert Type), World Values Survey (Inglehart et. al, 2002) (9 items in five-point Likert Type), and a questionnaire (14 items in rating scale) to assess participants’ behaviors toward sustainable life styles prepared by the researchers. Attitudinal and values items were adapted into Turkish and pilot-tested. In order to determine participants’ environmental values, attitudes towards sustainability, and behaviors toward sustainable life styles, the data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics. In addition, path analysis by utilizing LISREL 8.30 was employed to determine the relationships among sustainability related variables.

Regarding pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards sustainability, majority of them reported that sustainability is “a good thing”. Furthermore, the mean score on attitudes scale reflected participants’ favorable attitudes. The mean score on environmental values indicated that the participants developed favorable intrinsic values toward the nature and did not support the dominance of human beings on nature. However, looking at these pre-service teachers’ behaviors, the mean score showed that respondents were not taking every necessary action toward a more sustainable life. For example, these students had more favorable behaviors to save energy, but were not prepared to take political actions regarding environmental protection. The results of path analysis revealed that female students having higher tendency to follow media held more favorable attitudes and behaviors toward sustainable life styles, and more intrinsic environmental values. Moreover, environmental values were found to be significant determinants of participants’ behaviors, but attitudes were not.