Assessing the Attitudes and Beliefs of Preservice Middle School Science Teachers toward Biologically Diverse Animals

The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between United States (US) preservice middle school science teacher characteristics, their attitude toward a specific animal and their belief concerning the likelihood of incorporating information about that specific animal into their future science classroom. The study participants consisted of 204 US preservice middle school science teachers. The participants self-reported their gender, age, number of college biological science courses taken and their preference to teach biological science or physical science when they were an inservice middle school teacher. The participants were then shown thirty pictures of biodiverse animals. For each picture the participants rated their attitude toward the animal shown. The participants then rated the likelihood, based on their attitude, of incorporating information about the animal shown into their future science classroom. The preservice middle school science teacher characteristics that positively increased the preservice middle school science teacher’s attitude or the likelihood of incorporating information about biodiverse groups of animals into their future classroom were being a male, having taken one additional college biological science course or being older than 26 years of age. Implications are discussed that are applicable to teacher education programs and science educators.