Prospective Teachers' Attitudes Towards the Use of Nuclear Energy and the Construction of Nuclear Plants in Turkey

Abstract

In this study we explored Turkish prospective teachers' attitudes towards the use of nuclear energy and construction of nuclear plants, a recent topic of discussion in Turkish medya. We conducted a survey including thirteen demographic and twenty 5-point Likert-scale items. In order to evaluate the reliability of the Likert-scale, we administrated the survey to 124 randomly choosen prospective teachers. The factor analysis an the principal components analysis revealed a reliabilty of 88. The accepted alpha value in the variance analysis between groups was.05. Later, we administred the survey to a total of 506 prospective teachers from the social and the science teaching programs in the Faculty of Education at Ondokuz Mayis University. Study analysis revealed meaningful differences among participants academic levels and socio-economic levels. Majority of our participants (51%) expressed that they did not have any formal knowledge on nuclear energy. Participants, who responded that they have same formal knowledge expressed that the mass media environmental courses and textbooks were the sources of their knowledge.