Pre-service teachers’ and primary students’ motivations and beliefs towards science

Abstract

In a fast-paced evolved modern world, scientific literacy (SL) is essential for an individual to interact and make decisions about science-related issues. A scientifically literate person should have not only scientific knowledge, but also motivations and beliefs toward science. The purpose of current research is the examination and comparison of pre-service teachers’ and primary school students’ motivations and beliefs towards science. There were 787 participants comprising the research sample. A three-factor structure was verified through statistical techniques such as exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Moreover, the reliability coefficient is considered acceptable. According to descriptive analyses and statistical significance tests, both groups show medium to quite positive perceptions toward the value of science and science self-efficacy. Additionally, there is no statistically significant difference in both groups’ performances regarding these categories. Regarding personal epistemology, students achieve a statistically significantly better performance than the teachers. However, both groups’ scores were assessed as moderate to low. Suggestions for further research about primary school students’ and teachers’ SL motivations and beliefs are presented.