Attitudes Toward Sustainable Environmental Education and International Posture in Pre-Service EFL Teachers: A Correlational Study
DOI:
10.70211/ltsm.3026-7196.832Published:
2026-11-03Downloads
Abstract
International posture (IP), a motivational disposition toward the international community that underlies L2 willingness to communicate, has been explained mainly by language exposure and intercultural contact; whether it also relates to values regarding global issues has rarely been examined. This correlational study examined the relationship between pre-service English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ attitude towards sustainable environmental education (SEE-A) and the four dimensions of IP. The participants were 172 pre-service teachers in an English Language Teaching program at a state university in Türkiye, selected through convenience sampling, who completed a 27-item environmental attitude scale and the International Posture Scale. SEE-A correlated weakly and positively with all four IP dimensions (r = .15 to .21), corresponding to 2%–4% shared variance; only the link with having things to communicate to the world remained significant after Holm’s correction, and the coefficients did not differ significantly. This association did not depend on the IP item about environmental issues. In exploratory comparisons, neither SEE-A nor IP differed by gender, and IP did not vary by year of study; SEE-A differed across year groups, but without a consistent pattern, and this did not survive correction. Because no data were collected on English use, willingness-to-communicate behavior, or teaching outcomes, the results indicate only that the two dispositions share little variance, suggesting that IP is largely distinct from environmental attitudes. The paper offers implications for EFL teacher education as propositions for further longitudinal and intervention studies.
Keywords:
International Posture L2 Motivation Sustainable Environmental Education Pre-Service EFL Teachers Teacher EducationReferences
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