Development of an Attitude Scale to Assess K-12 Teachers' Attitudes toward Nanotechnology

Abstract

To maximize the contributions of nanotechnology to this society, at least 60 countries have put efforts into this field. In Taiwan, a government-funded K-12 Nanotechnology Programme was established to train K-12 teachers with adequate nanotechnology literacy to foster the next generation of Taiwanese people with sufficient knowledge in nanotechnology. In the present study, the Nanotechnology Attitude Scale for K-12 teachers (NAS-T) was developed to assess K-12 teachers' attitudes toward nanotechnology. The NAS-T included 23 Likert-scale items that can be grouped into three components: importance of nanotechnology, affective tendencies in science teaching, and behavioural tendencies to teach nanotechnology. A sample of 233 K-12 teachers who have participated in the K-12 Nanotechnology Programme was included in the present study to investigate the psychometric properties of the NAS-T. The exploratory factor analysis of this teacher sample suggested that the NAS-T was a three-factor model that explained 64.11% of the total variances. This model was also confirmed by the confirmatory factor analysis to validate the factor structure of the NAS-T. The Cronbach's alpha values of three NAS-T subscales ranged from 0.89 to 0.95. Moderate to strong correlations among teachers' NAS-T domain scores, self-perception of own nanoscience knowledge, and their science-teaching efficacy demonstrated good convergent validity of the NAS-T. As a whole, psychometric properties of the NAS-T indicated that this instrument is an effective instrument for assessing K-12 teachers' attitudes toward nanotechnology. The NAS-T will serve as a valuable tool to evaluate teachers' attitude changes after participating in the K-12 Nanotechnology Programme.

Keywords:

• Attitude toward nanotechnology
• Nanoscience education
• K-12 Science education
• Professional development

Acknowledgements

Funding of this study was supported by Ministry of Education Advisory Office and National Science Council in Taiwan, under grant number 97M1068 and 98-2120-S-007-004-NM. The author would like to thank Prof. Da-Jeng Yao and Prof. Jer-Liang Yeh for sharing their perspectives about this study and helping with the data collection.

Notes

The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development Programme for International Student Assessment define scientific literacy as: ‘the capacity to use scientific knowledge, to identify questions and to draw evidence-based conclusions in order to understand and help make decisions about the natural world and the changes made to it through human activity’. Based on this definition, nanoliteracy is a special case of scientific literacy, which emphasizes the research and applications of nanotechnology to the natural world and the society.

Sweeney (2006) defines ‘nanoscience’ as ‘the study of materials and associated physical, chemical, biophysical and biochemical phenomena on the scale of ∼1–100 nanometers’ (p. 437). Kelsall, Hamley, and Geoghegan (2005) define ‘nanotechnology’ as ‘the term used to cover the design, construction and utilization of functional structures with at least one characteristic dimension measured in nanometers.’ (p. 1). Nanotechnology can also be regarded as ‘an umbrella term for a wide range of technologies, and, of particular significance, represents a convergence of quantum physics, molecular biology, computer science, chemistry, and engineering’ (Sweeney, 2006, p. 437).