An evaluation of an elementary science methods course with respect to preservice teacher’s pedagogical development in a mid-west state university in the United States

To evaluate the science methods course, the author did a quantitative study by using a questionnaire (Appendix B) adapted from the instrument of Hudson & Ginns (2007). The instrument was used in examining the course outcomes and measuring preservice teachers’ perceptions of their development towards becoming elementary science teachers. There were 37 items in Hudson & Ginns (2007) questionnaire which represent four course outcomes or constructs and are listed in Table 1.

Table 1. Constructs of the questionnaire used by Hudson and Ginns (2007)

	Constructs	Course outcomes
1	Theory	The preservice teachers are able to understand theoretical underpinnings used for developing a science curriculum, articulate the key components of the science syllabus, provide a rationale based on theory for designing and implementing an effective science program, describe and analyze the theoretical base of science curriculum development, articulate constructivist principles for teaching science, compare existing approaches for teaching science, articulate different viewpoints on teaching science, and talk comfortably about teaching science.
2	Children’s development	The preservice teachers are able to understand the development of children’s concepts, abilities, skills, and attitudes.
3	Planning	The preservice teachers are able to understand effective planning for science teaching and learning.
4	Implementation	The preservice teachers are able to understand and implement effective science teaching practices.

According to Hudson & Ginns (2007), the Cronbach’s alpha that measures the internal reliability of this instrument is high, i.e., Cronbach’s alpha for Theory is .92, Children’s development is .89, Planning is .96 and Implementation is .97. Hair et al. (1995) state that Cronbach’s alpha for an instrument if greater than .70 is considered acceptable. In this study, the author did not include the construct of children’s development as this element was not emphasized in the science methods course. Instead, it had been taught in child development courses taken by preservice elementary teachers such as Introduction to Education, General Psychology, Child Development, Classroom Learning Theory and Early Childhood Education. This led to a reduction in the number of questions. The questionnaire the author used consists of 25 items with a Likert-type scale of responses, namely: ‘strongly disagree,’ ‘disagree,’ ‘uncertain,’ ‘agree,’ and ‘strongly agree.’ For statistical analysis, a score of ‘1’ was assigned to ‘strongly disagree,’ and so on through the five response categories. As less items were used in this study (reduced from 37 to 25 questions), the Cronbach’s alpha of the adapted instrument had to be recalculated and are listed in Table 2. The Cronbach’s alpha for Theory was below .70, due to the fact that few items (N = 4) extracted. The Cronbach’s alpha for Planning and Implementation were acceptable as they were above .70.

Table 2. Cronbach’s alpha of the adapted instrument

Theory	pretest	α= .66	N = 4
	posttest	α= .40
Planning	pretest	α= .77	N = 8
	posttest	α= .73
Implementation	pretest	α= .89	N = 13
	posttest	α= .88