Elementary Education In-service Teachers' Familiarity, Interest, Conceptual Knowledge and Performance on Science Process Skills

Abstract

The purposes of this research study were to determine (a) in-service elementary teachers’ familiarity, interest, conceptual knowledge of , and performance on science process skills and (b) how in-service elementary teachers’ familiarity with, interest in conceptual knowledge of and performance on science process skills relate to each other. The science process skills include the basic skills [observation, classification, measuring, predicting, inferring, and communication,] and the integrated skills [hypothesizing, experimenting, identifying and controlling variables, formulating models, interpreting data, and graphing]. Twenty-four in-service elementary teachers enrolled in a master of math and science education degree program participated in this study. Participants completed questionnaires on their familiarity and interest in the science process skills, a science processes conceptual knowledge test, and a performance test on science process skills. Results indicate that these teachers were highly familiar with the science process skills, but moderately interested in these skills. Results also indicate that teachers were more interested in learning more about integrated process skills than basic process skills. Teachers possessed very low conceptual knowledge of the science process skills. However, teachers performed well on science process skills performance test. Significant correlations among the four constructs (familiarity, interest, conceptual knowledge and i performance) were only significant between familiarity and interest. The implications, discussion and recommendations for future research and instruction on science process skills in teacher education programs have been presented.