Preservice Elementary Science Teacher Attitudes Matter: A New Instrument on Positive Affect Toward Science

ABSTRACT

This article is focused on the creation of a new scale for measuring preservice teachers’ positive affect for science, the Preservice Elementary Teacher Affect Scale for Science (PETAS–S). This new instrument is designed specifically to measure the level of positive affect toward the subject of science in preservice elementary teachers. Confirmatory factor analysis reveals the instrument loads on a single factor, positive affect. Reliability is robust, with Cronbach’s alpha of .96. Positive affect has been shown to predict future levels of engagement in domain-specific academic subjects and is expected to aid preservice teachers in understanding the complex relationship between their students’ interest and enjoyment of science with their own. This research contributes to the important role of emotion in preservice teachers’ attitudes toward the subject of science and how it might affect the way they teach their future students.

KEYWORDS:

• attitude
• elementary
• elementary science
• positive affect
• preservice
• preservice teachers
• science instruction
• science teaching
• teacher
• teacher affect