Abstract

The attitudes of the future teachers toward the sciences can influence the way they conceive science teaching and how they interpret the orientation of the new sciences programs in Canada. Indeed, it is important, according to these programs, that the teachers offer their pupils scientific activities where they are active and engaged, for example activities where they have to plan experiments to answer their own questions regarding phenomena. And yet it appears that these new orientations can enter in conflict with the attitudes which the future teachers of sciences have towards their domain. Thus, it is important, for training in science education to better know the attitudes of future teachers towards the sciences. Following a review of literature on attitudes towards sciences, we worked out a questionnaire composed of 52 questions on attitudes towards the sciences. In every question, there is a choice of answers ranging from disagree very much, disagree, do not know, agree, and agree very much. We analysed the answers of this questionnaire, which was distributed to 249 students in teacher education programs of two Canadian universities, with an item response model. Our analyses point out that these questions distributed themselves on an increasing scale of attitudes of a good degree of fidelity (Rasch equivalent of the KR-20 = 0,79). This scale of attitudes towards the sciences could be useful to professors in science education to identify the attitudes of future science teachers towards the sciences and to conceive training activities to encourage them to adopt orientations more in line with those recommended in science programs.