Exploring the validity of a single-item instrument for assessing pre-service primary school teachers’ sense of belonging to science

Abstract

Current research indicates that pre-service primary school teachers’ sense of belonging to science is decisively related to their professionalization in teaching science. Nevertheless, because only very few studies have examined pre-service teachers’ sense of belonging to science so far, further research in this regard seems both reasonable and necessary. To this end, there is a need for instruments enabling a valid assessment of pre-service primary school teachers’ sense of belonging to science. However, existing sense-of-belonging-to-science instruments require a comparatively long time on task due to their significant number of items. Consequently, the applicability of these instruments within research is limited because surveys in educational contexts must often be brief and highly economical. The research we present in this paper aims to tackle this issue by examining on an exploratory level, whether and to what extent pre-service primary school teachers’ sense of belonging to science can be validly assessed using a single-item instrument. In doing so we report qualitative, as well as quantitative, findings that provide cogent evidence regarding the validity of our instrument. The implications of the present study for future research are outlined at the end of this paper.

Pre-Service Primary School Teachers Interdisciplinary Competence and their Interest, Self-Concept, and Sense of Belonging Regarding Natural and Social Sciences: Findings from a Longitudinal Study in Germany

“…On the other hand, studies (conducted in Germany) that address pre-service primary teachers' interest, academic self-concept, and sense of belonging regarding natural and/or social sciences are scarce (e.g., Beudels et al, 2021;Feser & Plotz, 2023;Lenzgeiger, 2022;Reichhardt, 2018;Wang & Sneed, 2019). Studies focusing on natural sciences have found that these affective-motivational orientations, although distinguishable, tend to be substantially correlated with one another (Feser & Plotz, 2023;Wang & Sneed, 2019). An analogous finding looms for social sciences.…”