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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 13, Issue 2, Article 14 (Dec., 2012) |
This study is focused on the evaluation of a science methods course to see if the curriculum used by the author helped preservice elementary teachers to develop their science teaching pedagogy. No control group was administered in the research as it was unethical to teach a class where little to be taught. The results of this study are not meant to be generalized as the number of participants is small (N=26) and this curriculum for the science methods course was implemented in only one mid-west state university. Due to the reduction of the items as compared with the original questionnaire of Hudson and Ginns (2007), the Cronbach’s alpha for each of the construct was recalculated with Theory (pretest α= .66, posttest α= .40), Planning (pretest α= .77, posttest α= .73 ) and Implementation (pretest α= .89, posttest α= .88 ). This led to a low Cronbach’s alpha for the construct Theory. The author accepted the low Cronbach’s alpha as some of the question items in the original questionnaire were not applicable to this study. As for future research, additional items can be added to increase the Cronbach’s alpha. As there is no practicum attached to the science methods course, the preservice elementary teachers may understand the concepts and the teaching pedagogy but they need to have a real classroom setting to practice what they learn.
