Dissertations and Theses @ UNI
Availability
Open Access Thesis
Keywords
Elementary school teachers--Training of; Inquiry-based learning; Science--Study and teaching (Elementary); Science teachers--Training of; Academic theses;
Abstract
Inquiry has been an essential part of science education since the Alphabet Curriculum was published. Science process skills (SPS) were first defined in 1968 and today SPS are the skills of inquiry. These skills are central to science education, and should be part of the curriculum at every level, from elementary to post-secondary school. In order to successfully teach SPS to students, teachers must have a thorough understanding of both sets of skills. This study focused on the pre-service elementary teacher population and investigated this population's SPS proficiency. This study investigated inquiry-based courses for pre-service elementary teachers, and focused on two purposes. The first purpose investigated the relationship between SPS proficiency and final course grades in three inquiry-based science courses for preservice elementary teachers. The second purpose compared the gain in SPS proficiency between an inquiry-based course to a similar, non-inquiry-based course. Students were recruited, and contacted to take a pre-test and post-test. At the end of the semester, final course grades were collected, and nonparametric statistics were used to analyze the data. Analysis of student scores from pre-test to post-test revealed no significant change in SPS proficiency in an inquiry-based earth science course. When comparing gain in SPS proficiency to final course grade, no significant relationship was found. The second purpose was not analyzed because there was an insufficient amount of data. Since few students participated in this study, different results may be observed with a larger population.
Year of Submission
2012
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Department of Biology
First Advisor
John Ophus
Second Advisor
Dawn Del Carlo
Third Advisor
Jody Stone
Date Original
2012
Object Description
1 PDF file (95 leaves)
Copyright
©2012 Laura Witt Dawson
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Dawson, Laura Witt, "Correlation between Science Process Skills Proficiency in Pre-service Elementary Teachers and Academic Achievement" (2012). Dissertations and Theses @ UNI. 2129.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/etd/2129
Comments
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