Teachers Attitudes Toward Science

Research Highlights

• We surveyed 884 teachers who participated in a WCS PD course to measure three components of science attitudes: personal science attitudes, professional science attitudes, and science teaching self-efficacy.
• Before PD, science and non-science teachers had strong positive personal science attitudes, however, non-science teachers reported significantly lower science teaching self-efficacy.
• Before PD, elementary science teachers scored lower on all science attitude components compared to post-elementary science teachers, and scored similarly to non-science teachers.
• All groups experienced improvement in science attitudes from participating in science-focused PD, although the greatest gains were seen by elementary science teachers.

Context

Young people’s positive attitudes toward science are in noticeable decline by the time they reach middle school and teachers play an important role in preventing and reversing this decline by helping students see science as engaging, accessible, and meaningful. Unfortunately, however, teachers often report lacking the resources and confidence to effectively support their students’ science learning. Science-focused professional development (PD) can help teachers develop the skills and subject-matter knowledge to better facilitate students’ connections with science, as well as the opportunity to strengthen their personal and professional connections with science.

We surveyed 884 teachers who participated in multi-day PD courses at a WCS zoo or aquarium from 2014 to 2017, measuring three components of science attitudes: personal attitudes, professional attitudes, and science teaching self-efficacy. Grounded in social constructivist science practices, each program included several components -- presentation of new science content, experiential learning, personal reflection, and group meaning making – and were designed for teachings working in a variety of teaching contexts, including different grades and teaching specializations.

Research Questions

Methods

Teachers completed an optional survey at the end of the PD course. Respondents completed questions about their personal and professional attitudes toward science, their science teaching self-efficacy, and details about their teaching context, such as grade taught, teaching experience, and science teaching frequency.

Major Findings

Science attitudes are complex and teachers showed differences in various components of science attitudes, which were further influenced by teaching context. For example, before PD, teachers reported significantly higher professional attitudes toward science compared to their personal attitudes or self-efficacy teaching science. However, while science teachers showed similarities between the personal attitudes toward science and their self-efficacy teaching science, non-science teachers reported significantly lower self-efficacy.

Participating in PD strengthened science attitudes for all teachers, with particularly strong impacts on elementary science teachers. Prior to participating in the course, elementary science teachers had lower scores on all subscales compared to middle- and high-school science teachers and larger gains after participating. Zoo and aquarium educators are experts in science, pedagogy, and communication, making these institutions well-situated to teach contemporary science content, use experiential learning strategies to encourage personal connections to that content, and provide strategies and resources to translate the content to a specific standards-aligned teaching context.