What Influences Affect Pre-Service Teachers Views of Teaching Science

Many preservice elementary and middle school teacher candidates do not appear to enjoy science or find it interesting (Bergman & Morphew, 2015; Howitt, 2007; Uyanik, 2016). There has been a significant amount of research done on how to help low amounts of teaching self-efficacy in science (Palmer, 2015; McKim & Velez 2017), but there is little to no evidence of why this occurs. The aim of this project is to research the causes of low teacher self-efficacy in science, and if the way that science was taught in the public school system has an effect on it. A survey will be administered to all EC-6 and 4-8 Teacher Certification candidates at Angelo State University to ascertain if students views of science gained in middle school and high school influence their thinking about teaching science. The results from this survey will be analyzed to see if a theme arises as to why many preservice teacher candidates share this low self-efficacy in science. It is the goal of this study to see if there is a correlation between preservice teacher candidates self-efficacy in science and their views of science that were created while in the public school setting.