Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Master of Arts

Program

Education

Supervisor

Puvirajah, Anton

Abstract

Teachers’ affect and aptitude towards science and technology influence their students through their teaching, other activities, and informal interactions. The study explored and understand Ontario pre-service teachers’ affects toward science and Web 2.0 by designing and validating a questionnaire that includes demographic, usage, and scale questions; and by surveying 134 B.Ed. students. The science part of the survey was validated and analyzed, the Web 2.0 scale items were excluded because of low correlation.

The results indicate that: (1) Pre-service teachers have overall high motivation, high self-efficacy, a positive attitude, and medium aspiration towards science. (2) Science motivation, self-efficacy, attitude, and aspiration scores in the survey can be predicted by other categories; however, self-efficacy and aspiration do not predict each other. (3) Five variables – time spent on learning about science, time using Web 2.0 to learn science, educational background, science-related university major, and teaching option – influence pre-service teachers’ science motivation, self-efficacy, attitude, and aspiration.

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