Change in student beliefs about attitudes toward science in grades 6-9

The Iowa Assessment Package (Yager, Blunck, & Ajam, 1990; Enger & Yager, 1998) was used to assess the learning achievements of the experimental and the control groups. In this package instruments for assessing student growth in each of the six domains of science teaching are provided. Directions are given for using each instrument. Student response sheets and teacher tabulation sheets are also provided when appropriate. The data for the present study were collected using instruments entitled Attitude, Preferences, and Understanding that were adapted from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) 1977 measure of attitudes about science. Validity is provided by the officials and writers for NAEP. The specific validity of two tests were established with agreement by NAEP testing experts and thirty Chautauqua lead teachers. The reliability of the attitudes and perceptions was determined to range form 0.79-0.83, (test-retest two weeks later). The reliability coefficients for the assessment items were obtained by using the test-retest method with students in classes taught by all lead teachers for a given year. NAEP reports the reliability of attitude items to be 0.82. The mean, standard divisions (SD), and t- values were calculated and used to assess differences between pre- and post-tests scores for attitude toward science domain for all students in two class sections. The 5% level of significance (P≤0.05) was used to assess statistical differences.