Abstract

GARCIA-RUIZ, Mayra  and  SANCHEZ HERNANDEZ, Beatriz. The attitudes towards natural sciences and their impact upon the educational practice of primary school teachers. Perfiles educativos [online]. 2006, vol.28, n.114, pp.61-89. ISSN 0185-2698.

The objective of this research was to identify the elementary school teachers' attitudes related to science, and their repercussion on science teaching. The attitudes were evaluated through interviews, observations and surveys applied to a sample of 100 teachers. The results showed that elementary school teachers have non favorable attitudes related to science and that these attitudes have negative effects on their science teaching. These findings could be due to: a) Their lack of grasp for the scientific knowledge, b) their preferences are aimed to Spanish and math, c) they don't have enough knowledge about experiments, and d) they have a lot of administrative work. However, most of them manifested their desire to make a change in attitude to improve their educative practice. These results emphasize that initial and continuous training of teachers should include attitudinal elements in addition to disciplinary and pedagogic elements.

Keywords : Attitudes; Elementary education; Science teaching; Educative practice.