Affecting Preservice Elementary Teachers' Attitudes toward Inquiry Teaching in Science through Projects with Individual Children / Larry Flick.

The purpose of this study is to improve attitudes toward learning science and inquiry-based, science teaching through specially designed instruction in a science methods course for preservice teachers. Eighty preservice teachers over two terms elected to complete one of two projects as part of their science methods course. The "Discussions in Science" (DiS) project used a science topic as the basis for discussions between teacher and child. The teachers analyzed children's thinking about sciences as well as variables affecting inquiry science teaching. The "Mentorship Program" (MP) project used a topic jointly selected by a middle school able learner and the teacher based on a mutual interest. These topics were generally in the social sciences and the project focused on developing a presentation by the able learner. The Test of Science-Related Attitudes and Preferences and Understandings were adapted to measure attitudes toward science and inquiry teaching. Paired t-tests of pretest and posttest gain scores showed a significant increase in attitudes toward inquiry teaching in the DiS project and not in the MP project. An analysis of covariance holding pretest attitudes constant failed to show a significant difference. (Author/YP)

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