Science teachers' beliefs about curriculum design |
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| Authors: | Dr Derek Cheung Pun-Hon Ng |
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| Institution: | (1) Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong;(2) Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hongkong |
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| Abstract: | Teacher beliefs about curriculum design affect the quality of science education in schools, but science researchers know little
about the interrelation of beliefs about alternative curriculum designs. This article describes a quantitative study of secondary
science teachers' beliefs about curriculum design. A 33-item Science Curriculum Orientation Inventory (SCOI) was developed
to measure five distinct orientations to curriculum: academic, cognitive processes, societycentred, humanistic, and technological.
Data were collected from 810 integrated science, chemistry, physics, and biology teachers in Hong Kong. A confirmatory factor
analysis of teacher responses to the SCOI indicated that science teachers' beliefs about curriculum design had a hierarchical
structure; the five distinct curriculum orientations were positively correlated, forming a second-order curriculum, meta-orientation.
Physics teachers were less society-oriented than biology, integrated science and chemistry teachers, and integrated science
teachers were more humanistic than physics teachers. Although science teachers' beliefs about any of the five alternative
curriculum designs did not vary with their teaching experience, the difference between beliefs about the cognitive processes
orientation and the humanistic orientation increased when teachers had gained more teaching experience. Implications of these
findings are discussed. |
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| Keywords: | |
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