Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Attitude Research in Science Education: Classic and Contemporary Measurements

Issa M. Saleh & Myint Swe Khine
Emirates College for Advanced Education
United Arab Emirates



The research into how students’ attitudes affect learning of science related subjects have been one of the core areas of interest by science educators. The development in science education records various attempts in measuring attitudes and determining the correlations between behaviour, achievements, career aspirations, gender identity and cultural inclination. Some researchers noted that attitudes can be learned and teachers can encourage students to like science subjects through persuasion. But some view that attitude is situated in context and it is much to do with upbringing and environment. The critical role of attitude is well recognized in advancing science education, in particular designing curriculum and choosing powerful pedagogies and nurturing students.

Since Noll’ (1935) seminal work on measuring the scientific attitudes, a steady stream of research papers that describe development and validation of scales appear in scholarly publications. Despite these efforts the progress in this area has been stagnated by limited understanding of the conception about attitude, dimensionality and inability to determine the multitude of variables that made up such concept. This book makes an attempt to take stock and critically examine the classical views on science attitudes and explore the contemporary attempts in measuring science related attitudes. The chapters in this book are reflection of researchers who work tirelessly in promoting science education and will illuminate the current trends and future scenarios in attitude measurement.

The topics that will cover in the book, but not limited to are:

Attitude as a mental concept
Psychology of attitude measurement
Psychometric properties of attitude constructs
View of attitude and its components
Philosophy of science attitudes
Dimensionality of attitude scales
Research design in measuring attitudes to science
Science attitudes scales and validations
Gender and attitudes towards science
Cultural influence and attitudes towards science
Classical measurements of science related attitudes
Contemporary attempts and findings on science attitudes
This book is tentatively scheduled for publishing by an international publisher in 2010.
Students’ Attitudes Toward Scientists
Anita Welch
Assistant Professor – Science Education
North Dakota State University

Douglas Huffman
Associate Professor – Science Education
University of Kansas

Students tend to have stereotypical views of scientists and tend to see science as a unique activity performed by special people. This stereotypical view of scientists and science is associated with a negative attitude toward learning science. In this chapter we examine students’ attitudes toward scientists from both a theoretical and practical perspective. Students’ attitudes towards scientists are explored through a study on the impact of an after-school robotic competition. Secondary students participated in a robotics competition where they worked side-by-side with scientists to design and build a robot to perform a specific task. Students’ attitude toward the scientific process and attitudes toward scientists were measured using the Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA). Students who participated in the robotics competition were compared to students in the same schools who did not participate in the robotics competition. Results indicated that students who participated in the robotic competition had a more positive attitude toward scientists and science. The robotics competition appears to have helped students see science as a normal activity and it appears to have helped students see scientists as “normal” people. The theoretical and practical implications of results for teaching science are discussed.
Dr. Anita Welch is an Assistant Professor of Science Education at North Dakota State University, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate science methods courses. Dr. Welch has a background in physics and chemistry, science education, and program evaluation. She served as principle investigator on a grant to evaluate Sharing FIRST. She received the Woodie Flowers Award present by the Greater Kansas City FIRST Regional Competition for teaching excellence in teaching science, math, and creative design. Her current research focuses on the use of technology and its relationship to student motivation and epistemical beliefs.
Dr. Douglas Huffman is a Professor of Science Education at the University of Kansas. Dr. Huffman has a background in civil engineering, science education, and program evaluation. He has evaluated numerous National Science Foundation projects including the Collaborative for Excellence in Teacher Preparation (CETP), State Systemic Initiatives (SSI), and the Collaborative Evaluation Communities (CEC). He also serves as the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant designed to study evaluation methods in urban schools. He currently serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, and has published his work in journals such as the American Journal of Evaluation, New Directions for Evaluation, School Science and Mathematics, and the Journal of Research in Science Teaching.
The influence of experiential learning on indigenous New Zealanders’ attitude towards science: Enculturation into science by means of legitimate peripheral participation

Richard K. COLL
Levinia PAKU
School of Science & Engineering
University of Waikato, New Zealand

Worldwide indigenous peoples are reported to be under represented in science and engineering higher education study and related careers. The literature suggests this is due in part at least to indigenous people feeling alienated from Western ideas of science, with entry into science viewed as a form of ‘border-crossing’ into a new cultural community. Recent research in our group suggests indigenous New Zealanders that engage in experiential learning as part of a work-integrated learning program in science and engineering, like their non-indigenous counterparts, are rapidly enculturated into the community of practice that forms the scientific community. This, it appears, occurs by means of legitimate peripheral participation in the community as these ‘newcomers’ work alongside practicing scientists in a form of cognitive apprenticeship. In doing so they gradually adopt features of the scientific attitude, and enhance their attitude towards science, eventually seeing themselves as legitimate members of the scientific community, and developing a sense of belonging that is not easily achieved in conventional programs of study in higher education.
Richard K. Coll is associate professor of science education at the University of Waikato. He holds a PhD in chemistry from the University of Canterbury and an EdD in science education from Curtin University of Technology. He is Deputy Dean of the School of Science & Engineering and Director of Cooperative Education.

Levinia Paku holds an MSc in chemistry from Waikato University, and is a placement coordinator in the School’s Cooperative Education Unit.
New Approaches to the study of students’ response to science
’Students’ responses’ to science include their attitudes and internalization of science (e.g. valueing, identifying) as well as their choices and actions related to science. This broader conception has advantages over attitudes alone, when it comes to understanding students’ paths in and out of science and school science. In this chapter I describe two new approaches to the study of students’ responses to school science, both pragmatic by nature, and combining perspectives from cultural research with a quantitative or a Mixed Methods methodology. The approaches have been applied to studies of Physics in Danish upper secondary school, and though these targeted different aspects of students’ responses and applied highly different methods the results were found to complement each other. A study using the first approach related students’ attitudes towards physics to various types of Cultural Border Crossings. Here, particular value-related crossings were established as major predictors of attitude, along with Physics Self-concept and teacher’s interest in students. The second approach starts from a systematical investigation of the general value-orientations as part of identity of urban upper secondary students and relates these to students’ situated responses. Important empirical value-orientations tend to ‘explain’ the results of the first study.
Contemporary Attempts and Findings on Science Attitude
Nizar AL-Salih
Attitude is cantered part of human individuality. It is defined as a summary evaluation of an object of thought which can be anything a person discriminates or holds in mind.In addition, attitude may encompass effective behaviors, and cognitive responses. Attitude is best to be measured by two factors which are: Firstly, its nature and secondly, its object.The contemporary approaches Starting with the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) argues that attitudes when combined reflect important factors in predicting intention, behaviors. It is found that perceived social pressure may facilitate or inhibit performance of the behavior.Secondly, the Elaboration – Likelihood Model of Persuasion: The LMP depends on the persuasion and communication which investigate the ability and motivation to pay attention ‘Yes or No’ questions. If a person answers ‘yes’, will be directed to central route for persuasion and if the answer were ‘no’, he will be directed to peripheral route for persuasion too. Finally, both answers will be considered as attitude changes.Finally, the Theory of Triadic Influence: Refers to the personal, situational and environmental factors which have it influential on behavior. Likewise, the TTI postulation are – Implication for interventions, - Expanding to include biological influences, - The Quadratic Influence System (QIS).In summary of this Chapter four basic matters were suffice. Discussion of the need to decide on the relative importance of attitude objectives within the total evaluation was dealt with. In addition, arguments in the need of determining whether attitude measures should focus on outcomes and processes were brought up. Last but not least highlight on the major issues of measurement were not neglected which aimed to raise awareness concerning the ethics of contemporary measurement.

Development and test of an instrument that investigates teachers’ beliefs, attitudes and intentions concerning the educational use of simulations
Ioanna Rotsaka & Zacharias C. Zacharia

Department of Educational Sciences, University of Cyprus, P. O. Box 20537, Nicosia 1678, CyprusThe purpose of this research was to develop an instrument, namely, a questionnaire that investigates teachers’ beliefs, attitudes and intentions concerning the use of simulations for teaching purposes. The development of such an instrument comes as a need because of the absence of an instrument that is targeting specifically teachers and simulation use for teaching purposes. Up-to-date, the only questionnaires that are available in this domain focus on technology or computer technologies in general, which from our perspective are not proper for investigating teachers’ beliefs, attitudes and intentions towards the use of simulations for teaching purposes; in the sense that we do not know how each teacher defines or understands the terms technology or computer technologies. The development of the questionnaire was based on theories/models (e.g., Technology Acceptance Motel, Theory of Reasoned Action and Theory of Planned Behavior) developed in prior research studies focusing on the affective domain and computer technologies. For validity and reliability purposes we collected data from 500 elementary school teachers, who were aware of what a simulation is. All participants were randomly selected.Finally, besides reporting on the development of this instrument, we also present our initial findings.

Defending the attitude scales
Per Kind and Patrick Barmby
The use of Likert-items to create attitude scales has been under severe attack in science education research literature (Lederman, 2007; Osborne, Simon, & Collins, 2003; Reid, 2006). The critique has been directed both towards the technical quality of research instruments and the more general value of their contribution to attitude research. Some of this critique can easily be supported, as researchers, for example, commonly have been found to aggregate scores in items that conceptually belonging to different attitude constructs. Researchers have also ignored problems with using ordinal Likert items to build continuous scales. However, the critique tends to underestimate the positive contribution the use of attitude scales has made. The scales are regarded as an easy way of collecting information about attitudes and there is no obvious way of replacing them. The argument put forward in this chapter is therefore that we should work to find better and more consistent ways of building attitude scales and explore more systematically their strength and limitations, rather than rejecting their use. The chapter will present research that follows up the establishment of an attitude towards science measure including six different attitude scales (Kind, Jones, & Barmby, 2007). When constructing the measure, a great effort was made to separate attitudes into different dimensions and to measure these independently rather than seeing science as one domain. In the present study, construct validity of the scales for each dimension is explored using Rasch analysis (Rasch, 1960; Smith, 2004). Rasch modelling helps overcome the “ordinal problem” and contributes towards understanding dimensionality and proficiency levels of the scales. The study used the outcome from these analyses to create improved scales, which then were tested in new samples. Evidence for the quality and usefulness of the scales is given both in terms of explaining what the scales measure (i.e. internal validity) and in the nuances the scales are able to identify in students’ attitudes towards science (i.e. external validity).
THE MULTIPLE RESPONSE MODEL FOR THE “VIEWS ON SCIENCE-TECHNOLOGY-SOCIETY” (VOSTS) INSTRUMENT: AN EMPIRICAL APPLICATION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE ELECTRONIC-WASTE ISSUE
Yuqing Yu & Felicia Moore Mensah
ABSTRACT
With the rise of Science-Technology-Society (STS) in science curriculum, it is increasingly important for science educators to understand the relationships between students’ STS conceptions and decision-making about socio-scientific issues. The Views on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS) instrument has been proposed as a means to assess epistemological and sociological understandings of science. However, the qualitative nature of the instrument closed the possibility of applying quantitative analysis to VOSTS data. To enable inferential statistics, the Multiple Response Model (MRM) has been suggested. This paper presents an empirical application of the MRM for the VOSTS instrument in the context of the electronic waste issue. This study describes the applicability of the MRM and addresses the issue of unidimensionality. The study justifies that the MRM turns the VOSTS instrument into a new version Likert questionnaire that requires a test for dimensionality. It addresses limitations associated with item selection and categorization of VOSTS and provides implications for future use of the MRM in other empirical contexts.
Keywords: Science-Technology-Society (STS), Views on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS) instrument, the Multiple Response Model (MRM), decision-making, and dimensionality

The factors involved in people’s attitudes toward socioscientific issues

Shu-Nu Chang Rundgren


Swedish National Graduate School in Science and Technology Education Research, Department of Social and Welfare Studies, Linköping University, Sweden.



Abstract
In the science- and technology-dominating society of today, socioscientific issues (SSIs) has been emerging worldwide, and become a trend in science education research as well. Examples of SSIs could be whether the government should build a new free way, the consumption of genetically modified food (GMO), the use of nuclear power, global warming and so forth. We could say SSI exists locally and globally, but some local issues could turn into globally important considerations. For instance, the industrialization of a country can contribute to global warming, especially if a country neglects the control of CO2, and other greenhouse gases locally. Accordingly, it is needed to address SSIs in school education nowadays and also to investigate people’s attitudes toward different SSIs. The purpose of this chapter is to elaborate the importance of SSIs by indicating its related functions in science education as well as delineate the factors involved in people’s attitudes toward SSIs. Furthermore, the topics whether individuals’ educational or professional backgrounds and their viewpoints of epistemology can be related to their attitudes towards SSIs are also presented. The implications to research and education will be discussed.


Tailoring Information to Change Attitudes: A Meta-Structural Approach
Ya Hui Michelle See & Bernice L. Z. Khoo

The assessment of attitudes toward science education is important in order to
design messages and teaching strategies that will promote positivity toward science
education. A useful approach is to consider the components of attitudes from both a
structural perspective and a meta-cognitive perspective. This chapter distinguishes the
structural components of attitudes from meta-attitudinal features. For instance, affective
or cognitive structural bases of attitudes represent associations among emotions, beliefs
and overall evaluations in one’s memory whereas affective or cognitive meta-bases of
attitudes refer to subjective judgments about one’s evaluations being driven primarily by
emotions or beliefs. The meta-structural distinction can also be extended to include other
types of attitudinal bases such as value-expressive and social-adjustive functions, one’s
group membership, one’s self-schema, and so forth. The meta-structural distinction has
consequences for persuasion, as suggested by recent research that information that is
tailored to match an individual’s meta- and structural attitudinal features has implications
for the motivation and efficiency for processing the matched information, respectively.
Implications for designing messages to change attitudes toward science education will be
discussed.

New Approaches to the study of students’ response to science.

LARS BRIAN KROGH
’Students’ responses’ to science include their attitudes and internalization of science (e.g. valueing, identifying) as well as their choices and actions related to science. This broader conception has advantages over attitudes alone, when it comes to understanding students’ paths in and out of science and school science. In this chapter I describe two new approaches to the study of students’ responses to school science, both pragmatic by nature, and combining perspectives from cultural research with a quantitative or a Mixed Methods methodology. The approaches have been applied to studies of Physics in Danish upper secondary school, and though these targeted different aspects of students’ responses and applied highly different methods the results were found to complement each other. A study using the first approach related students’ attitudes towards physics to various types of Cultural Border Crossings. Here, particular value-related crossings were established as major predictors of attitude, along with Physics Self-concept and teacher’s interest in students. The second approach starts from a systematical investigation of the general value-orientations as part of identity of urban upper secondary students and relates these to students’ situated responses. Important empirical value-orientations tend to ‘explain’ the results of the first study.


Assessment Practices for Understanding Science-Related Attitudes

Marcelle A. Siegel
Investigating science-related attitudes has long been a substantive feature in science education. A key motivation for the study of attitudes is the desire to increase interest, performance and science retention, along with improving science literacy. This chapter focuses on ways in which attitudes are assessed. There is a wide diversity in attitude assessment practices; an appropriate way to examine these practices is through the lens of the COI (cognition, observation, and interpretation) assessment triangle as reported in Knowing What Students Know (NRC, 2001). The usage of the COI assessment triangle provides a unique approach to analyzing current attitude-based assessments and assessment design.
We begin by providing a brief discussion about the meaning of “attitudes towards science,” followed by an overview of existing research methods and instruments used to assess attitudes. These will be organized through the lens of COI to show how theory and methodology interact. Through an examination of literature, including our previous work (Halverson, Siegel, & Freyermuth, 2009; Rebello, Siegel, Freyermuth, & McClure, accepted; Rebello, Siegel, Witzig, Freyermuth, & McClure, under review; Siegel & Ranney, 2003) we will discuss assessment strategies, assessment design, ways in which results are interpreted, and implications for assessment practices in the future.

Dr. Marcelle A. Siegel is Assistant Professor of Science Education at the University of Missouri in the United States. She holds a joint appointment with the Learning, Teaching, & Curriculum Department and the Biochemistry Department and was awarded the Isabelle Lyda Professorship by the College of Education. Her research focuses on assessment innovations, attitudes towardscience, and socioscientific decision making. Dr. Siegel is currently the PI of a grant from the National Science Foundation and Co-PI of grants from the National Science Foundation and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Carina M. Rebello is currently a Ph.D. student in science education at the University of Missouri. She received her M.S. degree in physics in 2007 from Ball State University.Stephen B. Witzig is currently a Ph.D. student in science education at the University of Missouri. He received a M.S. degree in biochemistry in 2006 from the University of Missouri. Dr. Shari Freyermuth is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Biochemistry Department at the University of Missouri. She teaches courses in biotechnology and molecular biology. She is involved in science education research focusing on assessments and socioscientific decision making. Dr. Freyermuth is currently the PI of a USDA Higher Education Challenge grant and Co-PI of a grant from the National Science Foundation.