Pre-service Science Teachers’ Beliefs about Science Teaching and Perception of the Nature of Science

Abstract

For the successful implementation of educational reforms that aims to get students to be active learners, it has to be realized that teachers are the actual determiners of the classroom curriculum. Therefore, teachers who are in the position of the administrators of these reforms should be supported and should develop positive beliefs about the implementation of these reforms. The aim of current research was to determine relationship between pre-service science teachers’ beliefs about science teaching and perception of the nature of science. Sample of the research was comprised of 37 senior students in the department of elementary science education. “Teacher Belief Interview”, (Luft & Roehrig, 2007) and Views of Nature of Science Questionnaire (Lederman et al., 2002) were used. Results from the questionnaires and the interview were used to construct individual teacher’s profiles which were used to identify relationships between their beliefs and perception of nature of science. Additionally, a positive significant correlation between two entities was found.