Creation and Application of a Replicable Analytic Method to Determine Attitudes and Beliefs of Undergraduate Science Professors Toward the Discipline of Education

Abstract

Detailed here is the creation and application of a replicable method bricolage that brings together Discourse Analysis, discourse analysis, and the theory of reasoned action to examine attitudes and beliefs of university science professors toward the discipline of education. This method used a two-phase method for analysis. The first phase looked for phrases that could be defined as either an attitude or a belief based on definitions taken from the social psychology and communication studies literature. The second phase interpreted the overall data to explore the influences on the formation of the attitudes and beliefs as well as to support or refute the findings from Phase 1. The need for a replicable Discourse Analysis method is apparent in the education literature, as is a solid definition of what constitutes an attitude or a belief. The method outlined here provides good definitions for attitudes and beliefs, a method for extracting both constructs from the data, and incorporates an internal crystallization process for looking at and comparing emergent themes from both phases of analysis.Keywords attitudes and beliefs, discipline of education, Discourse Analysis, theory of reasoned action Two ideas are presented in this article. The first addresses the continued desire by many researchers to examine attitudes and beliefs as they relate to a variety of topics. The second relates to approaches used to analyze such data. There is a rich base of research on which to draw when attitudes and beliefs are the focus of research.As interest in and use of qualitative and emerging mixedmethods approaches increases, new ways to think about data analysis are also emerging, including a reliance on expertise drawn from multiple disciplines. As an example of this crossdisciplinary work, the methodology outlined here draws from several disciplines, including communication studies, science education, rhetoric, and social psychology. Additionally, while this methodology is in keeping with more traditional qualitative research, there are elements of quantitative research incorporated throughout primarily in the use of the theory of reasoned action (TRA).Method bricolage (Fogelberg, 2014a) was introduced in a study of zoo signs and further developed in a study of university professors (Fogelberg, 2014b). It introduces a potentially replicable analytic method that uses discourse analysis and Discourse Analysis in discrete, but still qualitative, manners to specifically discern attitudes and beliefs, as defined by Fishbein and Azjen's (1975) TRA.The term bricolage was introduced into qualitative research by Claude Levi-Strauss (1962/1966 and has subsequently been expanded by a variety of scholars (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011;Wetherell, 1998). This article describes the creation of a replicable analytic model focused on extracting attitudes and beliefs about the discipline of education. By discussing the concepts of attitudes and beliefs, the TRA, method bricolage, and the specific analytic technique, it is hoped that science ed...

More descriptive norms, fewer diversions

“…Organizational climate and social norms can affect individual behaviors, especially for personal descriptive norms, which refer to the perceived popularity of a behavior among an individual's significant others, and is more easily internalized into an individual's intrinsic motivation (Kim et al, 2015). Research work is relatively free and unrestrained, and the injunctive norms are limited to scholars (Fogelberg, 2016). Many Chinese universities have endeavored to create personal learning environments and assist their faculty in becoming more self-directed learners and researchers in the field of SM (Greenhow and Lewin, 2015;Hong et al, 2016).…”