| The responsibility of curriculum leadership in the school rests with those persons employed by the local Board of Education to implement its policies. Those persons are employed as superintendents, principals, coordinators, department heads and in other administrative-type roles.;What types of understandings of curriculum do administrators need to enable them to make decisions which will provide students with classroom experiences which will lead those students to understand the discipline of science?;Because the science textbook is a strong influence upon the schools' curriculum, the science textbook adoption process was investigated. Science textbook adoption is a process for which school administrators are responsible and in which science teachers should be involved. The science textbook adoptions of 1973 and 1977 in the State of Oklahoma were investigated. Science teachers had examined and evualuated science textbooks in both adoptions. The information they produced was compiled and provided to school administrators. Science textbook purchasing patterns were then collected. The study revealed that those science textbooks that best represented science, learning science and teachining science as rated by science teachers were not those being purchased for use in the science classrooms.;The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis: the attitudes toward science, learning science and science teaching of school administrators are not those held by professionals in science education. To test that hypothesis, attitudes of administrators making decisions about science, learning science and science teaching, had to be measured. To measure administrators' attitudes a Science Attitude Inventory (SAI) was developed and then validated using members of the National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST). The SAI was mailed to a stratified proportional random sample of 240 administrators and 154 responded.;Five statistical analyses were made on the data. These were an intercorrelation analysis, a t-test, a F-star test, a Behrens-Fisher statistic v and a principal components analysis.;The statistical analyses revealed that administrators do not perceive science, learning science and teaching science as do science educators. School administrators were not sure about what science is, how it is learned and how it should be taught. Perhaps administrators had an indifferent attitude towards science, or they lacked sufficient knowledge about the nature of science, learning science and science teaching. |
