Abstract
According to various studies, personal factors such as interest, attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs are important in influencing teachers’ motivation to teach science subjects in kindergarten and primary school [1; 2]. For this study, a sample of female first year students in the kindergarten and primary school teacher training programme at University of Teacher Education Bern was analysed. A questionnaire [3] was used to survey how students rate different areas of natural and social science subjects (social/ethical, cultural/religious, historical/political, physical/technical, geographical, economical, biological), which constitute the official subject “nature – human – society” in Switzerland’s primary schools. In the second part of the questionnaire, students had to rank the curricula contents of the subject “nature – human – society” according to their own individual preferences. In the third part, they had to rate different learning activities. Next to this questionnaire, the German version of AIST [4], which detects more general areas of interests in the sample, was applied.
Results show that biology and physics/technology are positioned on opposite ends of a large spectrum of interest in social and natural science areas. All other subject areas are positioned in-between.