Conclusion
The goals of this project were to design and implement a series of courses that would better prepare elementary school teachers to teach science and would promote positive attitudes toward science and science teaching. The initial offering of the first series of courses met with moderate success. Although the courses fostered an increase in cognitive knowledge, the magnitude of the improvement was not what we had anticipated. There was no significant improvement in the attitudes of the students toward science or science teaching.
The science course has been revised and is currently being offered for both preservice and inservice teachers. The revisions include lengthening the class time, so that the material can be covered at a more relaxed pace, and increasing the amount of active team teaching by the instructors to further emphasize the interrelations between chemistry and biology and to eliminate the fragmentation of the course. It is hoped that these changes will also have a positive impact on the students’ attitudes toward the course and thus toward science in general.
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DeTure, L.R., Gregory, E. & Ramsey, B.G. A program to improve elementary teacher preparation in science at Rollins College. J Sci Teacher Educ 1, 49–53 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02614715
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02614715