Attitudes and Views of Prospective Social Studies Teachers Toward Garden-Based Learning

The aim of this study is to determine the attitudes and views of prospective social studies teachers towards the garden-based learning approach. A convergent parallel mixed methods design was used in the research. The population of the study consisted of prospective social studies teachers, while the sample consisted of prospective social studies teachers studying at Afyon Kocatepe University. While 100 prospective social studies teachers were included in the quantitative component, 24 prospective social studies teachers participated in the qualitative component. The Attitude Scale Towards Garden-Based Learning Approach was used to collect quantitative data, while a semi-structured interview form was used to collect qualitative data. Prior to the inferential analyses, skewness and kurtosis values, Q–Q plots, residual diagnostics, and Levene’s tests were examined to assess the assumptions underlying the planned statistical analyses. Independent-samples t-tests were used for two-group comparisons, with Welch–Satterthwaite adjusted results reported when the homogeneity-of-variance assumption was violated, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used for comparisons across grade levels. Effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals were also reported. The significance level was set at 0.05. Content analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. The study found no statistically significant differences in attitudes toward garden-based learning according to gender, sensitivity to environmental issues, or grade level.