Saudi Science Preservice Teachers' Attitude Toward Teaching Practices in Sciences

The purpose of this work was to
investigate the attitudes of Saudi secondary preservice
science teachers (SPSTs) toward science teaching practices.
The essential goal was to use generated findings to improve
the current secondary science education programs in Saudi
Arabia and to develop better science teacher practices. The
selected practices were posted by the National Research
Council in 1999. These indicated that students learn
science best through understanding of science rather than
memorization of scientific facts and concepts, building new
knowledge and understanding on what is already known and
believed, formulating new knowledge by modifying and
refining current concepts and by adding new concepts to
what is already known, taking care of their own learning,
social learning environments and interactions, and
application of knowledge to novel situations. This work was
based on SPSTs in four teachers' colleges located in
cities: Riyadh, Makkah, Taif, & Dammam. SPSTs were
asked to complete a 58-item questionnaire survey and
respond to four open-ended survey questions. Data was
analyzed by the Rasch analysis model, parametric &
non-parametric tests.