| Abstract: | Conclusion Increased emphasis on school based curriculum development and assessment, with stress placed on attitudinal aims, together
with the policy of the N.S.W. Schools Board that attitudes should be included in school assessment programmes, has created
a major dilemma for N.S.W. science teachers. The results of this study indicate that such a dilemma can be a very real one,
particularly for young teachers just out of training.
Out of 23 sets of results obtained from 12 cognitive achievement tests, set by a class of 19 Diploma in Education students,
only two produced a coefficient alpha reliability of the order of 0.80 and none had an alpha of 0.85 or above.
In their first year of teaching, these students will be participating in test construction exercises for internal assessment
purposes, where their results will be expected to discriminate between individual students. The attitude instrument developed
by the class was promising, for an early stage of instrument development, producing an alpha of 0.65, with item analysis indications
that it has the potential for further refinement to produce a useful instrument.
However, correlations between the attitude scales and those achievement tests which had reliabilities sufficiently high to
allow reasonable interpretation of results, were very low, indicating very little relationship between the attitude as measured
by the scale and science achievement as measured by the cognitive tests. Obtaining a set of student results by adding scores
from this instrument to results of achievement tests would be of very doubtful validity. In addition, there is the whole complex
issue of the unknown degree to which respondents give socially desirable answers, when it is known that the results of such
a test will be used for assessment purposes, influencing crucial decisions about their future.
Analysis of the results of the attitude test by grade level showed a predictable and statistically significant upward shift
in scores with increasing Grade level, except for grade 8 which had the lowest mean, but the increase in the mean between
junior and senior grades was only a moderate magnitude, tentatively suggesting that the influence of five years of high school
science is not a major one in developing a belief in the value of conservation of the natural environment. |
