Development of the Life Science Teaching Attitude Scale: A Study of Validity and Reliability

Abstract

. In this study, It’s aimed to develop a scale that can determine elemantary teachers’ and preservice elemantary teachers’ attitudes towards life science teaching. A systematic approach was used to develop of instrument. Firstly, item pool was generated reffering to support literature and expert view and then form has been finalized created items presented to larger group of experts. The form was administered to 434 preservice teachers for exploratory factor analysis. Structure as a result of expolatory factor analysis was subjected to confirmatory factor analysis with a saple consisting of 250 elemantary teachers. It was seen that the scale consists of 24 items and 3 subscales (loving, appreciation, caring). For the full scale, cronbach alpha coefficient and Spearman Brown split half reliability were calculated .93 and .81 respectively. For the subscales, the internal consistency coefficient and Spearman Brown split half reliability varied between .86-.89 and .84-.87 respectively. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted for testing the validity of structure and three factor structure of the scale was confirmed. When evaluated findings of validity and reliability, scale of the
development is determined to be valid and reliable instrument to determine the attitudes for life science teaching