On the Trail of Future’s Conscious English Teachers: Recycling and Zero-waste Awareness and Practices of ELT Students

Muzaffer Pınar Babanoğlu | Reyhan Ağçam | Muhammet Fatih Adıgüzel | Esin dündar | Tuçe Öztürk Karataş | Nebahat Badem | Özge Kutlu Demir

Sustainability in English Language Teaching (ELT) is a current paradigm that entails language education as a vehicle for empowering individuals to address environmental challenges on global platforms and to cultivate environmental consciousness and socially responsible mindsets. EFL teacher candidates have critical roles in shaping future generations’ habits for sustainability while teaching English as a lingua franca. As educators-in-training, their personal sustainability habits such as zero waste and recycling can reflect on their teaching strategies and set powerful examples for their students. This study aims to investigate EFL teacher candidates’ awareness and attitudes towards zero waste and recycling practices, and to highlight their role in promoting sustainability in education. A total of 288 ELT students from three state universities participated in this quantitative study. The research data were collected using two structured questionnaires and analyzed through statistical methods. The findings revealed high mean scores for zero-waste and recycling practices of the participants, with statistically significant differences regarding age and gender. These results indicated that EFL teacher candidates possess strong sustainable habits that could positively impact thei...