Nowadays, we’ve faced some environmental problems all around the world. Global warming, environmental pollution (garbage, industrial, air pollution, nuclear waste, chemicals, acid rains, e.t.c…), species extinction and other problems are very important environmental problems. These problems continuously damage people’s and other living things’ health, and our planet (Oskamp, 2000). They also have potential future hazard.

Although people are aware of environmental problems, they are not coherent about behaving positively to their environment. Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig, & Jones (2000) and Kaplan (2000) stated that even people who consider the environmental problems, don’t reflect this to their behavior. Emotional factors were thought of effecting people’s eco-friendly behaviours. Personel connection with nature guides people’s behavior toward the nature. On the other hand, disconnected with nature may cause some negative consequences like perishing the world (Schultz, Shriver, Tabanico, & Khazian, 2004). Some feeling-based researchers think about feeling sympathy and emotional senses toward the nature are determinant factor on people’s eco-friendly behaviors and accelerator of changing behavior positively (Allen & Ferrand, 1999; Pooley & O’Connor, 2000).

Developing positive behavior toward the nature is possible by embracing  and understanding the nature. Embracing the nature means acknowledging the living rights of all of the living things, conserving their living areas, and being sensitive toward them.  The people who have some experiences at the nature notice their environment and they act carefully. They know they live in the world in accordance with plants, animals, and microorganisms. So, these people love the nature and respect their environment. Chawla, (1999) found that connectedness to nature is related with this love and respect. Interacting with the nature directly and having some experiences in natural areas would develop sensitivity toward environment.

A lot of ecologist and eco-psychologist stated that connectedness to nature is a key for accelerating eco-friendly behaviors (Mayer ve Frantz, 2004). Our connectedness to nature is related with our interaction with the nature. Lots of researchers revealed that first-hand experiences at the nature increased and enriched the connectedness to nature (Schultz, Shriver, Tabanico, & Khazian, 2004; Nisbet, Zelenski & Murphy, 2009; Perrin & Benassi, 2009).  Many interventions were applied in environmental education, some of which are field trips to the nature, visits to nature centers, museums, parks, botanic garden and zoos (Knapp & Poff, 2001; Ballantye & Packer, 2002).Such learning environments represent nature as close as possible.But, it was not always possible to take the learners to natural sites and/or botanic gardens. One option which could be done in the classrooms is watching nature videos, environmental documentaries and talk about them. How about its effectiveness with respect to having direct experience in the nature? This question guided this resarch study. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relative effectiveness of field trips to the nature and nature documentaries on pre-service elementary science teachers’ connectedness to the nature.

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