The emotions about teaching and learning science: A study of prospective primary teachers in three Spanish universities

Abstract

A descriptive and comparative study is made of the emotions that prospective primary teachers in three Spanish universities have about teaching and learning the natural sciences, differentiating between approaches to the content of Biology/Geology and Physics/ Chemistry. The study was carried out using a closed-response questionnaire which was completed by 315 primary education bachelor's degree students in the Universities of Extremadura, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and the Autónoma of Barcelona (UAB). The results showed that in their recall of their secondary education, most of the prospective teachers have positive emotions towards learning Biology/ Geology and negative towards learning Physics/Chemistry. With respect to their future teaching in primary education, there predominated positive emotions towards Biology/Geology, and negative emotions towards Physics/Chemistry, except for the UAB students who reported more positive emotions than negative in this latter case. There was an increase of positive emotions in their expectations of their future teaching of all the science content, and a marked decrease in the negative emotions, relative to the emotions that they had experienced as students of these subjects in secondary school.