The examining of prospective teachers’ views about renewable and non-renewable energy sources: A case study of Turkey

The aim of this study is to determine prospective teachers’ views about renewable and non-renewable energy sources. To collect data, a questionnaire with 5 open-ended questions was conveyed to 463 prospective teachers selected from Agri Ibrahim Cecen University. The results showed that almost three fourths of the prospective teachers tend to denote hydroelectric energy sources. Also, the number of students who preferred nuclear power plants was higher than that of thermal power. In these results, some suggestions were made for future studies and implications for learning and practices.


INTRODUCTION
Turkey, one of the developing countries in the world, has a high population and economic growth, so its energy needs to increase yearly.This situation has posed overall renewable and non-renewable energy sources.For example, Turkey government is planning to construct several nuclear power plants (example, Akkuyu in Mersin and Sinop) in forthcoming years.This has led to controversial issues, socio-scientific issues or reasonable disagreement (example, Çalik and Coll, 2012;Çalık et al., 2013;Hodson, 2006;Sadler, 2004) on whether nuclear power plants are supposed to be constructed instead of renewable energy sources.Furthermore, many citizens tend to be afraid of science and its impact on daily life (Coll and Taylor, 2004;Coll et al., 2008).This situation calls for development of responsible citizens who are capable of applying scientific knowledge (Driver et al., 2000;Kolstø, 2001a;Sadler, 2004) as well as helping students to become scientifically oriented (Solomon, 1994;Ültay and Çalik, 2012).
Due to the potential of this energy issue, few studies have been carried out on varied perspectives: energy policy and the situation of energy sources (Gurung et al., 2011), renewable energy education (Chawla et al., 1996;Yumurtaci and Kecebas, 2011), views about renewable energy sources (Kilinc et al., 2009;Liarakou et al., 2009) and/or nuclear power plants (Cooney, 2008;Tsaparlis et al., 2013).Among these studies, Liarakou et al. (2009) examined secondary school teachers' views about renewable energy sources in Greece and found that they were unable to teach the topic in their classes (Liarakouet Email: mehmet.hasiloglu@hotmail.com. Tel: +90505 746 al., 2009).Kilinc et al. (2009) examined 7 to 8 grade Turkish students' (aged 13 to14 years) ideas about renewable power generation.He found out that, about half of the students appreciated the contribution that renewable sources could make a reduction in global warming, and more than half of them thought that such generators would create environmental problems.Tsaparlis et al. (2013) implied that acceptable or partially acceptable answers to nuclear science involving nuclear power plants were provided on the average by 20% of Greek and 11% of Turkish students, while a large proportion (on the average, around 50% of Greek and 27% of Turkish students) refused to participate in answering the questions.
The undergraduate students' views about energy problems in Chinese showed that, they did not appreciate the energy status of China.Araitz et al. (2010) conducted an argumentative study about environmental concepts (including renewable energy sources) with undergraduate students and he found that, they did not relate consumption of resources to economic consequences.The foregoing studies highlight that scientific literacy plays a significant role in constructing knowledge, that is, renewable and non-renewable energy sources.Therefore, any issue about scientific literacy should shed more light on the role of teachers' education or prospective teachers because they have a pivotal role in making students scientific literates.Regarding educational literature, it shapes and trains our future generations (example, Çalık and Aytar, 2013;Çalık et al., 2013).Hence, there is need for further research on prospective teachers' views about renewable and non-renewable energy sources.
Furthermore, with the idea, 'content knowledge is an important indicator of science teaching self-efficacy' (example, Çalık, 2013;Çalık and Aytar, 2013), prospective teachers' views of renewable and non-renewable energy sources should be examined.This study attempts to compensate for a vital deficiency in the current literature.The aim of this study is to determine prospective teachers' views about renewable and non-renewable energy sources (nuclear, hydroelectric and thermal power plants) in terms of nature, human health, security, economy and need of energy

Sample
The samples of this study consist of 463 prospective teachers selected from the Department of Primary Education, Faculty of Education in Agri İbrahim Çeçen University, Turkey.

Data collection
To develop the questionnaire, unstructured interviews were initially conducted with four prospective teachers who were no part of the sample.Hence, the questionnaire with five open-ended questions was improved (see Appendix 1).A group of expert (three science educators: their majors are educational sciences, science teaching and primary education) checked and confirmed its reliability and content validity.

Data analysis
A group of expert (three science educators) analyzed and categorized the prospective teachers' responses to the questionnaire.Within the descriptive analysis method, the results were presented through basic analysis (frequency and percentage).

RESULTS
As seen in Table 1, nine different positive views appeared; two out of the 9 different views had the highest percentages: "Renewable energy sources have no harmful effect on human health and life and/or natural ecosystem and/or global warming" (40.13 %) and "Renewable energy sources are inexhaustible" (27.1 %).This result is an indication of confidence in renewable energy sources.
As seen in Tables 2 and 3, the prospective teachers' views on nuclear power plants showed both positive and negative dimensions.Two of the positive views were very common: "If precautions are taken, nuclear power plants should be constructed by high-ranking experts" (31.25%) since they contribute to the development of Turkey" (43.75%).Similarly, one of the negative views has a very high percentage: "Nuclear power plants contaminate the environment and/or organisms" (88.98%).That is, trust of authority and economic development of the country seems to have positively shaped the prospective teachers' views whilst perceptions of the environment and organisms and human health underpin their negative views.
As shown in Tables 4 and 5, the prospective teachers held both the pros and cons of the thermal power plants.Two common positive views depicted by the prospective teachers were: "Thermal power plants are low-cost and high-energy efficiency" (36.29%) and "Turkey has enough raw material for use in Thermal power plants" (1800%).For the negative views: "Thermal power plants contaminate the environment and/or damage humans" has the highest percentage (7235%).In a parallel view of nuclear power plants, economic reasons had positive views while environmental reasons had negative views.
As observed in Tables 6, 7 and 8, prospective teachers viewed hydroelectric power plants as an environmentally friendly or unfriendly energy source.For example, most of them stated that hydroelectric power plants do not contaminate the environment (73.37%), while over half of them (60%) implied that hydroelectric power plants use up water sources and deteriorate ecological balance.This shows that, the effect of hydroelectric power plants on the environment confused the prospective teachers and brought about cognitive conflict.Indeed, it is an expected conflict since hydroelectric power plant is still an ill-structured issue in terms of its advantages and  disadvantages.However, most of the prospective teachers paid more attention to the use of hydroelectric power plants as compared to nuclear and thermal power plants.

CONCLUSION
The fact that majority of the prospective teachers seem to conceive the advantages and disadvantages of renewable energy gives assurance for our future teachers' capacities, but how will they adapt to these issues in their classes is still unexplored.Overall view of hydroelectric power plants may result from capacity of Turkey's water sources.Also, this may stem from mass media (example, TV, newspaper) effect.That is, they generally refer to negative effects of nuclear and thermal power plants and protest against because Turkish government has just decided to construct new nuclear and thermal power plants.Given an earlier survey study in 2009 by nuclear energy institute in US, they reported that 90% of the participants held a favorable impression of the local nuclear power plant, compared to the ratio of the present study (1231%), which was too low.This may come from perceptions of citizens in developed and developing countries.Likewise, this may also result from their familiarities.For example, USA has 104 active nuclear power plants but Turkey has no active nuclear power.This could generate a fear climate for science in Turkey and influence their prospective teachers' views.
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Table 1 .
Views of prospective teachers about renewable energy sources.

Table 2 .
Views of prospective teachers about nuclear power plants construction.

Table 3 .
Jarring opinions of prospective teachers about nuclear power plants construction.

Table 4 .
Views of prospective teachers about thermal power plants construction.

Table 5 .
Jarring opinions of prospective teachers about thermal power plants construction.

Table 6 .
Views of Prospective Teachers about Hydroelectric Power Plants Construction.

Table 7 .
Jarring Opinions of Prospective Teachers about Hydroelectric Power Plants Construction.

Table 8 .
Views of prospective teachers about nuclear, thermal and hydroelectric power plants.