Understanding the learning cycle: Influences on abilities to embrace the approach by preservice elementary school teachers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to deepen science teacher educators' knowledge about the process of instilling the learning cycle within the teaching repertoire of elementary education majors. A previous study revealed great variability in preservice teachers' capacity to understand the learning cycle; the current study was designed to explore factors contributing to this situation. Attitudes toward science and teaching efficacy were posited to explain the rate at which students grasped this instructional approach. Understanding of the learning cycle was found to be predictable by science teaching outcome expectancy but not by personal science teaching efficacy nor attitudes toward science. Significant increases in both measures of efficacy were discovered and individual efficacy scores at the end of the methods course were correlated significantly with scores on the learning cycle instrument. These data suggest that preservice teachers' belief in their ability to shape students' science learning can accurately foretell their potential for embracing the learning cycle as a viable teaching approach. In addition, instruction about the learning cycle appears to contribute to the teaching efficacy of preservice teachers. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 84:43–50, 2000.