EFFECT OF INSERVICE TRAINING ON ELEMENTARY TEACHERS' ATTITUDES TOWARD, USE OF TECHNIQUES, AND RESOURCES FOR INQUIRY-DISCOVERY SCIENCE TEACHING IN TAIWAN, REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of in-service training on teacher attitudes and teacher performance in their teaching of the new elementary science curriculum for grades one through five in Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.;Findings. Analysis of the data on self-reported teacher questionnaires on inquiry-discovery teaching found the following to be significant: (a) x('2) value for no item pertinent to attitudes toward the rationale for inquiry-discovery teaching, (b) x('2) value for two of thirty items pertinent to the use of methods and techniques of inquiry-discovery teaching, (c) x('2) value for two of eleven items pertinent to the use of teaching materials, facilities and resources in inquiry-discovery teaching.;Conclusions. Taipei elementary teachers who had received three weeks of in-service training of inquiry-discovery science teaching and teachers who had not received this training were found to have the following similarities: (1) They have similar attitudes toward the rationale for inquiry-discovery teaching. (2) They have approximately equal performance in using of methods and techniques of inquiry-discovery teaching. (3) They have about the same performance in utilization of teaching materials, facilities and resources in inquiry-discovery teaching.;Procedure. A 53 item questionnaire using a Likert type of scale was designed for this study. Sampled teachers came from 100 out of 120 public elementary schools in Taipei. Principals in 100 schools who were instructed not to choose the best teachers designated one teacher who had received training in a three-week inquiry-discovery science teaching for comparison with another teacher who had not received training in this approach. The critical values of the chi-square (x('2)) were used to test items related to the three hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance.