This study investigates how affective and self-related factors impact participation in science learning and environmental awareness and responsibility. Using PISA 2006 datasets from Taiwan and Canada having similar level of science competency, the model for this study verifies and expands an earlier model by examining the relationships among science-related interest, enjoyment, self-efficacy, self-concept, leisure time engagement, and future intended interest in science and how these relationships synergistically interact with environmental awareness and responsibility. The most consistent finding revealed that students' science self-concept in both groups was weakly associated with future intended interest and engagement in science learning and with their sense of environmental awareness and responsibility. Reasons for this phenomenon and possible causes underlying why students' science self-concept was weakly connected to their future intended interest in science learning are also presented. Finally, how the results of this study are important to science education instruction and research are forwarded in which students' identity and beliefs about self in science need to part of the next generation of science education reforms. #

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In the wake of interest‐study research in science education over the past 10 years, investigators have published many articles on how to define, measure, and develop students’ interest in learning science. This present study approaches empirical investigations on students’ interest in learning science from a different perspective. We argue that when three specific instructional strategies are combined, they form the Interest Combustion Triangle (ICT), which ignites and sustains interest in learning science among students who have grown cold toward science content. A future research agenda proposing a newly modified instructional strategy called the K‐W‐L2‐R Strategy Tool for providing science teachers and research investigators with a practical method for operationalizing and testing the ICT within the classroom context is also proposed.

This paper presents the results of a case study involving 282 Taiwanese elementary science teachers at the elementary level. These teachers provided responses to the science efficacy instrument (STEBI-A) and also provided personal data regarding how their years of general (YTE) and science (YTS) teaching experience may have influenced student achievement in science. Researchers used two multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to investigate the interaction and influence of YTE and YTS upon the personal science teaching efficacy (PSTE) and science teaching outcome expectations (STOE) of these teachers. The results advocate the position that the years of general teaching experience of elementary science teachers in Taiwan have a significantly greater impact upon their personal science teaching efficacy and science teaching outcome expectations than years of teaching science. This evidence calls into question whether Bandura and Tschannen-Moran_s view of teacher efficacy as both context and subject matter specific at the elementary level can be applied to Taiwan elementary teachers who teach science. The results of this study should benefit educators and policy-makers with respect to future elementary teacher education throughout Taiwan and other developing nations.

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