*Results and discussion*
A.  TPPI Survey    B. CLES Survey

The Science-related Profile of Faculty and Students with Respect to Classroom Environment and Science Teaching Beliefs
by
Chin-Tang Liu
Becky Baker
Farella Shaka
Larry Banks
Michelle Norgren
College of Natural and Applied Sciences  
and College of Education
A final paper submitted to Salish Research Project II in 1998

1. Students scored lower than teachers, particularly in Scientific Uncertainty and Shared Control.  Teachers perceive themselves sharing more control of the learning environment than their students do.

2. Education majors rated their classes as being considerably higher in Student Negotiation than did their pre-professional science counterparts.  The Research Team believes that the education majors have more verbal interaction because 60% of respondents were in elementary education with inquiry-based courses on earth science and physics whereas the science majors were taking the usual lecture/lab courses.
   
   The Research Team suggests that education majors perceive less Shared Control because they tend to resist the expectation of inquiry-based courses to reconstruct their own understanding of the natural world through the inquiry process.

3. Although faculty and students scores do not agree in value, they do tend to agree in direction--as one goes up or down, the other follows, although not to the same extent.  The one small exception is for the science majors on the Attitude scale, where their values converged somewhat with the others.  Their Attitude scores were still lower than those of any other group.

4. All students perceived less Critical Voice and Shared Control than the teachers, which is consistent with the Salish I study.  They state that:  "Students were much more likely to believe they could express their opinions about classroom instruction than to believe they could actually play a role in the decision making about that instruction."  [The University of Iowa.  1997b). p. ix]

5. All groups leaned toward the student-centered end of the scale in every category except that of Shared Control. The teachers perceived their classes as being more student-centered than students did.    The low score for students is consistent with findings for the Salish I report for secondary school students.  [The University of Iowa.  (1997b). p. 17] The question is whether or not faculty would like to change this perception of students.  There is disagreement within the Research Team as to where these scores should be.  The entire Goals 2000 Team will carefully consider this result and engage in a dialogue about what can be done to improve student's perceptions.

6. While scores in Scientific Uncertainty were above the mean of 21 for all groups, the Research Team is concerned that the results may be too low.  This question will be taken to the full Goals 2000 Team for discussion.  Again, team members will need to have further discussions on the extent to which they should promote science as a human endeavor in their courses.
   
   CLES areas: