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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which climate for innovation, supportive climate, and rules climate influence job performance and satisfaction of local police (LP) officers in Spain. By integrating multiple climates simultaneously into a single study the authors assess the added value of climate for innovation. Design/methodology/approach – Participants included 175 LP officers who completed a questionnaire including measures of climate (FOCUS-93), job satisfaction, and perceived performance. Findings – Multiple regression analyses showed that developing a climate for innovation has a positive impact on police satisfaction and perceived performance beyond that of well-established climates. Climate for innovation emerges as the main predictor of job satisfaction, while it provides a small, significant increment of explained variance in perceived performance. Practical implications – Policy makers should enable participation of officers in the innovating process, thus improving the quality of change and creating a better work environment. Originality/value – Building on the competing values framework (Quinn and Rohrbaugh, 1983), this research is a contribution towards understanding how different climate types combine and relate to each other to account for officers’ behaviours and outcomes.

ABSTRACT:The scarce attention to the assessment and evaluation in science education research has been especially harmful for teaching science -technology -society (STS) issues, due to the dialectical, tentative, value-laden, and polemic nature of most STS topics. This paper tackles the methodological difficulties of the instruments that monitor views related to STS topics and rationalizes a quantitative methodology and an analysis technique to improve the utility of an empirically developed multiple-choice item pool, the Questionnaire of VÁZQUEZ-ALONSO ET AL.Opinions on STS. This methodology embraces an item-scaling psychometrics based on the judgments by a panel of experts, a multiple response model, a scoring system, and the data analysis. The methodology finally produces normalized attitudinal indices that represent the respondent's reasoned beliefs toward STS statements, the respondent's position on an item that comprises several statements, or the respondent's position on an entire STS topic that encompasses a set of items. Some preliminary results show the methodology's ability to evaluate the STS attitudes in a qualitative and quantitative way and for statistical hypothesis testing. Lastly, some applications for teacher training and STS curriculum development in science classrooms are discussed.

[Recibido en febrero de 2011, aceptado en julio de 2011] Este estudio presenta una revisión de los contenidos para la enseñanza de la llamada "naturaleza de la ciencia" (y tecnología) desde las diversas aportaciones de la investigación didáctica especializada sobre estas cuestiones. La visión que se presenta aquí está relacionada con y es dependiente de diversos conceptos modernos, tales como la situación de profunda interacción entre ciencia y tecnología en la actividad científica actual (tecnociencia), que se traduce en una visión de la educación científica donde también se integra la tecnología; el lema de la alfabetización científica y tecnológica para todos, como guía general para lograr educar la competencia científica de los estudiantes; y la naturaleza de la ciencia (y tecnología) como componente innovador de la alfabetización para todos. La revisión presenta las diversas propuestas de contenidos básicos para la enseñanza de la naturaleza de la ciencia (y tecnología) que se manejan usualmente en la literatura especializada, con el fin de iluminar la selección de los contenidos curriculares y contextualizar mejor las propuestas del currículo español de ciencias (que se abordará en la segunda parte de este estudio). El objetivo es ayudar al profesorado a clarificar los contenidos enseñables y aportar sentido a los nuevos contenidos en los currículos españoles de ciencias acerca de estas complejas cuestiones.Palabras clave: naturaleza de la ciencia (y tecnología), preconcepciones alternativas, ideas de consenso, enseñanza de naturaleza de la ciencia, selección de contenidos curriculares.The selection of content to teach nature of science and technology (part 1): A review of the contributions of science education research This paper reviews the contents for teaching the so called "nature of science" (and technology) from the various inputs of science education research on these issues. The vision presented here is related to and dependent on many modern concepts such as the status of deep interaction between science and technology in the current scientific activity (techno-science), which translates into a vision of science education which integrates technology; the scientific and technological literacy for all motto, as a general guide to train the students' scientific competence; and the nature of science (and technology) as an innovative component of literacy for all. The review presents the various proposals of basic content for teaching nature of science (and technology) that are usually handled in the literature, in order to illuminate the choice of curriculum contents and better contextualize the Spanish science curriculum proposals (which will be addressed in a forthcoming paper). The goal is to help teachers to clarify the contents to be taught and make sense of the new content in Spanish science curricula on these complex issues.Keywords: nature of science (and technology), science preconceptions, consensus ideas, teaching nature of science, curriculum content selection. Alfabetización científic...

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