Primary teachers conducting inquiry projects: effects on attitudes towards teaching science and conducting inquiry

ABSTRACT

This study used an experimental, pretest-posttest control group design to investigate whether participation in a large-scale inquiry project would improve primary teachers’ attitudes towards teaching science and towards conducting inquiry. The inquiry project positively affected several elements of teachers’ attitudes. Teachers felt less anxious about teaching science and felt less dependent on contextual factors compared to the control group. With regard to attitude towards conducting inquiry, teachers felt less anxious and more able to conduct an inquiry project. There were no effects on other attitude components, such as self-efficacy beliefs or relevance beliefs, or on self-reported science teaching behaviour. These results indicate that practitioner research may have a partially positive effect on teachers’ attitudes, but that it may not be sufficient to fully change primary teachers’ attitudes and their actual science teaching behaviour. In comparison, a previous study showed that attitude-focused professional development in science education has a more profound impact on primary teachers’ attitudes and science teaching behaviour. In our view, future interventions aiming to stimulate science teaching should combine both approaches, an explicit focus on attitude change together with familiarisation with inquiry, in order to improve primary teachers’ attitudes and classroom practices.     

Optimal Identification of Mismeasured Individuals

Optimal appropriateness measurement statistically provides the most powerful methods for identifying individuals who are mismeasured by a standardized psychological test or scale. These methods use a likelihood ratio test to compare the hypothesis of normal responding versus the alternative hypothesis that an individual's responses are aberrant in some specified way. According to the Neyman-Pearson Lemma, no other statistic computed from an individual's item responses can achieve a higher rate of detection of the hypothesized measure- ment anomaly at the same false positive rate. Use of optimal methods requires a psychometric model for normal responding, which can be readily obtained from the item response theory literature, and a model for aberrant responding. In this article, several concerns about measurement anomalies are described and transformed into quantitative models. We then show how to compute the likeli- hood of a response pattern u* for each of the aberrance models.     

Multiple Factor Analysis

The knowledge explosion in combination with an overcrowded curriculum at all educational levels is causing many educators to place greater emphasis on attitude conceptualization. This paper confronts two interrelated problems, that problem dealing with the psychological concept of attitudes and the problem of attitude measurement. Conceptually, attitudes are explored from an affective, cognitive, behavioral, and biologic dimension. The result is a comprehensive attitude concept. The problem of attitude measurement is not that attitudes exist, nor that they are specific or general, but lies in the way that they are organized. With the current emphasis on computerized research and data analysis, it is astonishing that multiple factor analysis has been so infrequently used for attitude validation and instrumentation. As a measurement and analytic technique, multiple factor analysis provides the intrinsic power to isolate and identify attitudinal factors. Multiple factor analysis is a measurement technique designed to assess construct validity. As such, it unites psychometrics with psychological theory. Factor analysis as a computational technique and as a scale construction technique is explored. The principal component method of factor analysis is reviewed. Multiple factor analysis assists in the process of attitude scale construction in the following ways: 1.) determines the content (factorial) validity of a series of attitude statements by ascertaining whether they measure a single unitary characteristic or a complex of characteristics as reflected in an item intercorrelation matrix; 2.) contributes to the determination of construct validity by ascertaining the smallest number of factors that can be postulated to account for item intercorrelations 3.) provides the statistical research strategy upon which predictive and assessment instruments can be empirically determined from an unrotated factor matrix; and, 4.) serves in general as an objective basic research tool through which psychological traits underlying human attitudes can be derived.     

Measuring ambivalence to science

Ambivalence is a psychological state in which a person holds mixed feelings (positive and negative) towards some psychological object. Standard methods of attitude measurement, such as Likert and semantic differential scales, ignore the possibility of ambivalence; ambivalent responses cannot be distinguished from neutral ones. This neglect arises out of an assumption that positive and negative affects towards a particular psychological object are bipolar, i.e., unidimensional in opposite directions. This assumption is frequently untenable. Conventional item statistics and measures of test internal consistency are ineffective as checks on this assumption; it is possible for a scale to be multidimensional and still display apparent internal consistency. Factor analysis is a more effective procedure. Methods of measuring ambivalence are suggested, and implications for research are discussed.     

浅谈言外之意所产生的社会心理基础

言外之意是话里没有说出来的本意，不仅包括话语的实际意义，也包括伴随话语表现出来的一些附加意义，如感情色彩、态度评价等。人们在交际活动中使用言外之意，是一种社会现象。每一种社会现象都能反映出相应的社会问题。在社会交际交往中，言外之意产生的影响较大，人在使用言外之意时会考虑到自身或他人的心理、情感需要，以谋求最佳的信息传递。因而，社会大众心理和言外之意之间有着密切的联系。     

Learning about students’ knowledge and thinking in science through large-scale quantitative studies

The main issue addressed in this article is that there is much to learn about students’ knowledge and thinking in science from largescale international quantitative studies beyond overall score measures. Response patterns on individual or groups of items can give valuable diagnostic insight into students’ conceptual understanding, but there is also a danger of drawing conclusions that may be too simple and nonvalid. We discuss how responses to multiple-choice items could be interpreted, and we also show how responses on constructed-response items can be systematised and analysed. Finally, we study, empirically, interactions between item characteristics and student responses. It is demonstrated that even small changes in the item wording and/or the item format may have a substantial influence on the response pattern. Therefore, we argue that interpretations of results from these kinds of studies should be based on a thorough analysis of the actual items used. We further argue that diagnostic information should be an integrated part of the international research aims of such large-scale studies. Examples of items and student responses presented are taken from The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).     

Item analysis of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised

Indices of item diffculty and item discrimination were analyzed for the items comprising the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Revised as obtained from a group of 142 subjects with Full Scale IQs below 96. Item validities were estimated by computing the biserial correlation between dichotomized item responses and the total weight score. Kendall's tau was computed for each item. The item difficulties for each subtest except Information and Vocabulary are roughly in the same rank order as those obtained by the stadardization group. Evidence from the study indicates that the increase in the number of items on the WISC-R helped to increase its internal Validity. Analysis of the data ragarding the internal consistency of the test indicates that the majority of the items operate as significant discriminators. Changes in the order of that administration and /or revision of the record form would not seem warranted on the basis of the present study.     

对少儿班与普通班学生学业情感态度的研究

这是一项对超常与常态儿童学业情感态度的研究 ,其特点是详细考察学生对于学习课程 (特别是数学课程 )的情绪感受范围和层次 ,从得到的结果使我们看出 ,1 3岁的少儿(高智力 )班学生对学业内容有着比同龄常态班学生更积极的情感态度 ;而少儿班学生情感态度测量与学习成绩较低相关与他们的智能水平有密切相关。本研究显示 ,高学业儿童的学习成绩不仅基于较高的智力 ,儿童积极的学业情感也是重要的心理因素 ,应引起教育者的注意。     

DIF Detection and Interpretation in Large-Scale Science Assessments: Informing Item Writing Practices

Differential item functioning (DIF) analyses are a routine part of the development of large-scale assessments. Less common are studies to understand the potential sources of DIF. The goals of this study were (a) to identify gender DIF in a large-scale science assessment and (b) to look for trends in the DIF and non-DIF items due to content, cognitive demands, item type, item text, and visual-spatial or reference factors. To facilitate the analyses, DIF studies were conducted at 3 grade levels and for 2 randomly equivalent forms of the science assessment at each grade level (administered in different years). The DIF procedure itself was a variant of the "standardization procedure" of Dorans and Kulick (1986) and was applied to very large sets of data (6 sets of data, each involving 60,000 students). It has the advantages of being easy to understand and to explain to practitioners. Several findings emerged from the study that would be useful to pass on to test development committees. For example, when there was DIF in science items, MC items tended to favor male examinees and OR items tended to favor female examinees. Compiling DIF information across multiple grades and years increases the likelihood that important trends in the data will be identified and that item writing practices will be informed by more than anecdotal reports about DIF.     

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE CONTEXT EFFECT IN MATRIX SAMPLING1

Practical use of the matrix sampling (i.e. item sampling) technique requires the assumption that an examinee's response to an item is independent of the context in which the item occurs. This assumption was tested experimentally by comparing the responses of examinees to a population of items with the responses of examinees to item samples. Matrix sampling mean and variance estimates for verbal, quantitative, and attitude tests were used as dependent variables to test for differences between the “context” and “out-of-context” groups. The estimates obtained from both treatment groups were also compared with actual population values. No significant differences were found between treatments on matrix sample parameter estimates for any of the three types of tests.     

Attitudes towards science of intellectually gifted and mainstream upper primary students in Singapore

The attitudes towards science of upper‐primary students in three ability strands (average, above average, and gifted) were investigated. A total of 580 upper primary students from co‐educational government and government‐aided schools in Singapore were involved in this study. The attitude subscales investigated were enjoyment of science, preference for science careers, and appreciation of the social implications of science. Gender and ability were found to have statistically significant effects on the variations in the mean score for each attitude subscale. Boys, in general, had more positive views about science than girls. Overall, above‐average and gifted students had comparable attitudes towards science; both of them consistently showed more positive attitudes than average ability students. At least 18% of the sample, with greater percentage being boys, reported “not sure” responses in 50% or more of the total attitude items. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 940–954, 2008     

An exploratory study in school assessment: The relationship between achievement and attitude scales

Conclusion Increased emphasis on school based curriculum development and assessment, with stress placed on attitudinal aims, together with the policy of the N.S.W. Schools Board that attitudes should be included in school assessment programmes, has created a major dilemma for N.S.W. science teachers. The results of this study indicate that such a dilemma can be a very real one, particularly for young teachers just out of training. Out of 23 sets of results obtained from 12 cognitive achievement tests, set by a class of 19 Diploma in Education students, only two produced a coefficient alpha reliability of the order of 0.80 and none had an alpha of 0.85 or above. In their first year of teaching, these students will be participating in test construction exercises for internal assessment purposes, where their results will be expected to discriminate between individual students. The attitude instrument developed by the class was promising, for an early stage of instrument development, producing an alpha of 0.65, with item analysis indications that it has the potential for further refinement to produce a useful instrument. However, correlations between the attitude scales and those achievement tests which had reliabilities sufficiently high to allow reasonable interpretation of results, were very low, indicating very little relationship between the attitude as measured by the scale and science achievement as measured by the cognitive tests. Obtaining a set of student results by adding scores from this instrument to results of achievement tests would be of very doubtful validity. In addition, there is the whole complex issue of the unknown degree to which respondents give socially desirable answers, when it is known that the results of such a test will be used for assessment purposes, influencing crucial decisions about their future. Analysis of the results of the attitude test by grade level showed a predictable and statistically significant upward shift in scores with increasing Grade level, except for grade 8 which had the lowest mean, but the increase in the mean between junior and senior grades was only a moderate magnitude, tentatively suggesting that the influence of five years of high school science is not a major one in developing a belief in the value of conservation of the natural environment.     

An Investigation of Different Treatment Strategies for Item Category Collapsing in Calibration: An Empirical Study

To ensure the statistical result validity, model-data fit must be evaluated for each item. In practice, certain actions or treatments are needed for misfit items. If all misfit items are treated, much item information would be lost during calibration. On the other hand, if only severely misfit items are treated, the inclusion of misfit items may invalidate the statistical inferences based on the estimated item response models. Hence, given response data, one has to find a balance between treating too few and too many misfit items. In this article, misfit items are classified into three categories based on the extent of misfit. Accordingly, three different item treatment strategies are proposed in determining which categories of misfit items should be treated. The impact of using different strategies is investigated. The results show that the test information functions obtained under different strategies can be substantially different in some ability ranges.     

“心理防御机制”下的隐晦性身份——《人生历程》的精神分析批评解读

女主人公米利安呈现出隐晦不清的性身份,结合精神分析批评的相关理论,对米利安日常生活中冷若冰霜的待人方式和错综复杂的情感关系进行分析,发现这种隐晦不清的性身份其实是作者多萝西.理查逊在心理防御机制下进行创作的结果。     

How to Equate Tests With Little or No Data

Standard procedures for equating tests, including those based on item response theory (IRT), require item responses from large numbers of examinees. Such data may not be forthcoming for reasons theoretical, political, or practical. Information about items' operating characteristics may be available from other sources, however, such as content and format specifications, expert opinion, or psychological theories about the skills and strategies required to solve them. This article shows how, in the IRT framework, collateral information about items can be exploited to augment or even replace examinee responses when linking or equating new tests to established scales. The procedures are illustrated with data from the Pre-Professional Skills Test (PPST).     

An assessment‐led approach to processes in the science curriculum

General conditions which should be met in the development of the idea of science processes and the potential benefits which would result are suggested. An approach to the definition of science processes based on variables and variable handling is outlined. It is argued that this should occur specifically in the context of educational practice. The processes should be elucidated within a taxonomy of tasks, the ultimate components of which should be interpretable and transferable skills. The development and utilization of such a taxonomy can most obviously occur in the context of assessment. The techniques of item banking and domain definition in domain‐referenced tests are then discussed in relation to the above issues. Multi‐dimensional labelling of an item bank is considered to be appropriate, and suggestive of a research programme for investigating the requirements of transferability and interpretability.

The labelling scheme resulting from an attempt to identify the significant dimensions of the age 15 Assessment of Performance Unit (APU) science item bank is reported. The paper indicates the effectiveness of the scheme and discusses the value of labelling those items within the assessment programme which draw heavily on the conceptual framework of taught science. A discussion of how the labelling scheme/item bank can be used in an attempt to identify the skills required in undertaking tasks based on science processes, and thus to develop tests of such identifiable skills for diagnostic and placement purposes in schools, concludes this paper.     

儿童情绪调节研究方法初探

儿童情绪调节的研究范式主要有量化研究和质化研究两种。量化范式中的研究方法主要有问卷法、VIPS法、PAM法、HR法、情境法和脑认知成像技术；观察法和访谈法是常用的质化研究方法。这两种方法分别从不同角度对心理现象进行研究，如果能够将二者进行有机结合，把对生理指标的研究、行为的研究和认知的研究成果加以融合，以此掏建一个合理、科学和动态的儿童情绪调节模型，那么此研究领域将有可能取得突破性进展。     

Lost in translation? Emotional intelligence,affective economies,leadership and organizational change

Not until the late 1990s did the rational/emotional binary embedded in mainstream literature on educational leadership and management come under challenge. Now the emotional dimensions of organisational change and leadership are widely recognised in the leadership, organisational change and school improvement literature. However, the dissolution of the binary did not draw from feminist social theory, critical organisational theory, the sociology of emotions or critical pedagogy. Instead, the strongest influence in educational leadership and administration has been from psychological theory, management theory and brain science, mobilised particularly through Goleman's notion of emotional intelligence. This article undertakes a feminist deconstruction of two texts: one from organisational theory by Goleman and the other on educational leadership and school improvement, in order to explore how ‘emotion’ has been translated into educational leadership. As a counterpoint, I identify the gaps and silences, appropriations and marginalisation identified from feminist perspectives. I argue that the emotional labour of teaching and leading cannot be individualised because emotion is both relational and contextual.     

Designing a likert-type scale to assess attitude toward energy conservation: A nine step process

A nine-step process was used as a multilevel screening mechanism in developing a Likert-type scale that measures that attitudes of teachers toward energy conservation. Following the assemblage of a 71 statement item pool, the statements were analyzed via qualitative criteria (i.e., presence of authoritative appeals, use of double negatives, statements irrelevant to the attitude object, etc.). The 60 statements meeting the qualitative criteria were then pilotted using a sample of 93 preservice elementary teachers. One of the 60 statements was modified as a result of respondent feedback. Data collected from respondents were anlayzed using the Likert Attitude Scale Analysis Main Program (LIKRT) and the emotional intensity of each statement was judged by the criteria: discrimination index, bipolar data, and neutral data. Nineteen statements that were part of the initial item pool met all the criteria set forth by the nine-step process; as a result, these statements composed the Attitude Toward Energy Conservation Scale. Coefficient alpha for the scale was reported at 0.81 by LIKRT with an average adjusted item-total correlation of 0.48. Initial validity data collected suggests the scale to be a valid measure of preservice teachers' attitudes toward energy conservation.