Investigation of Primary School Teachers' Attitudes towards Science Topics: Adaptation of the Original Version of DAS Questionnaire to Czech Environment
Abstract
Comparatively late exposition to science topics in education is considered one of the reasons of contemporary students' negative attitudes toward science which also impacts their interest in future profession in science. This situation could be to some degree improved by primary school teachers' preparedness to teach science topics in a way they foster the development of pupils' positive attitudes to sciences.
The attitudes of the teachers themselves have a substantial role to play, as they can serve as indicators of the need for change in this field. The goal of this paper is to introduce a Czech version of the DAS (Dimensions of Attitude toward Science) scale which was designed to investigate primary school teachers attitudes towards science topics and their teaching.
The scale contains 28 items separated into seven subscales. The data gathered using this tool provide overall information about a respondent's attitude, while at the same time enabling us to create an "attitude profile" (high potential, promissing, indifferent, unwilling).
Based on this information, it is possible to personalize the ways in which individual teachers can be supported. The original version of the research tool was first translated, piloted and further used in research.
Based on the results of the statistical analysis (Cronbach's alpha= 0.704 for the whole scale), it is possible to consider the Czech version of the scale sufficiently reliable and applicable in further research, also with respect to the high reliability of particular subscales of the research instrument.