¶ … teacher beliefs in contemporary science education goals and classroom practices. Fischer-Mueller, J. & Zeidler, D.L.
The participants in the study included nine science teachers at the Souhegan High School (SHS) in Amherst, New Hampshire. However, three "typical case" teachers chosen for the qualitative data analysis as they were willing to allow an observer in their classroom and participate in multiple interviews.
There are three major research questions being addressed: (1) What is the extent that the science teachers a SHS support the contemporary goals of science education? (2) What is a SHS science teacher's degree of conviction concerning their beliefs about particular goals? (3) How is a teacher's belief in contemporary goals translated or expressed by their actual classroom teaching?
The methodology included surveys and interviews (Contemporary Goals of Science Education Survey; Zeidler & Duffy, 1994) but for question three it is predominately qualitative in that it uses observation, coding of observations, and interview data of the three teachers in conjunction with their responses on the survey to address its main questions. The interviews were recorded on an audiotape and were semi-structured using the Newmann et al. (1995) (Standards and Scoring Criteria for Classroom Instruction and Assessment Tasks) as a guideline, but were obviously not fully standardized.
The data collection procedure is quite complex for a qualitative study and will be briefly addressed here. The researchers support the data collection method by adhering to Lincoln and Guba's (1985) criteria for trustworthiness with adherence to credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability of the data. To make sure the data was credible the researchers employed a number of techniques including prolonged engagement, persistent observation, triangulation, and member checking. Interviews with the teachers were used as a means of checking the coding and observations. A reflexive journal was used to attend to dependability and confirmability to rule out the effects of personal bias and experimenter effects of the investigator.
While the data analysis for three teachers, their classroom observations, and interviews is qualitative in nature all nine teachers completed the Contemporary Goals Survey. Teachers generally demonstrated a conviction to contemporary...
Fidelity Between Science Teachers' Beliefs and Instructional Practice Mueller, J.C. And Zeidler, D.L. (1998). A case study of teacher beliefs in contemporary science education goals and classroom practices. [Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching at the 71st conference in San Diego, California, on April 19-22, 1998]. The research uses a case study methodology and, as such, a sampling frame is not particularly
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Self-Efficacy: A Definition Social Cognitive Theory Triangulation Data analysis Teacher Self-Efficacy Problems for the researcher Data Analysis and Related Literature review. Baseline Group Gender Deviation Age Deviation Comparison of data with other literature in the field. Everyday Integration Efficacy, Self-esteem, Confidence and Experience Barriers to use Integration paradigm. Co-oping and Project design. Organizational Climate Teacher Integration Education. Meta-evaluation of data and related literature. Data Analysis and Comparison Recommendation for Further Research Data Review Report Teacher efficacy in the classroom is facilitated by a number of different factors for different professions. However,
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