A Psychometric Approach to Investigating the Environmental Beliefs, Intentions and Behaviours of Pre‐service Teachers

SUMMARY

The importance of attitudes and values in determining human behaviour towards the environment is widely recognised, but their relationship to knowledge and understanding of environmental issues is less well understood. However, attitudes are theoretical constructs and cannot be measured through direct observation; instead, a psychometric model of enquiry has been used to investigate environmental beliefs, intentions and behaviours. Using self‐reporting methods, the model has been used in relation to a broad range of environmental issues with a cohort of post‐graduate students training to become teachers. Some results of the investigation are presented and the potential of the model for relating cognitive and affective elements of environmental education is discussed.