Evaluation of a math/science inservice based upon participants' perceived changes in attitude and behavior relative to prescribed goals and process components.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a short-term math/science inservice based upon the participants' perceived changes in attitude and behavior relevant to the projects' goals and objectives. One hundred and three elementary school teachers from twelve schools in an urban school district participated in the inservice. The treatments were administered during two eight hour days, one month apart. The project was designed to improve the participants' attitude and behavior relevant to ten goals that centered around increasing awareness and use of science process and math problem solving approaches to teaching. The evaluation instrument was a pre- and post-treatment survey. Seventy questions were created and apportioned to test twenty hypotheses. Two hypotheses were tested to determine the achievement of each goal. One hypothesis tested the teachers' perceived change in attitude and the other tested the teachers' perceived change in teaching behavior relevant to a specific goal. Goal achievement was determined by comparing changes (significant at the.05 level) in attitude and behavior. All ten attitude hypotheses indicated a significant positive change occurred in attitude. None of the behavior hypotheses showed a significant positive change. It was determined that the inservice was totally effective in changing the teachers' attitude, relevant to the goals, but it failed to make a positive impact upon the teachers' perceptions of their actual practice in the classroom. It was speculated that the failure to affect behavior change was a result of one or a combination of the following four factors: insufficient time lapse to affect behavior, more accurate reporting on the post test, retrenchment resulting from feelings of inadequacy, and fear of venturing out alone primarily due to the lack of organizational development. Suggestions for improving the inservice were based upon proposed remedies for the above four factors.