Exploring the attitudes of secondary school chemistry trainee teachers

This article reports the first part of the research
done to explore the attitudes of graduate
scientists involved in a UK government initiative
to increase the number of chemistry teachers in
secondary schools in England and Wales. The
graduates were training to be chemistry teachers
at the University of East London (UEL). The work
uses two well-documented instruments to explore
the attitudes of trainees to the subject of chemistry
and chemists. It compares and analyses results;
the work was done with a small number of trainee
teachers over several years. It highlights some
issues and inconsistencies in the attitudes of
graduates through a possible mismatch between
the instruments.