A Comparison of Facilitated and Unfacilitated Administration of the Beliefs about Learning Environments (BALE) Instrument

Science teacher educators need to formatively assess preservice teachers’ understanding of the components of an effective science classroom in order to provide remediation before they assume primary responsibility for instruction. The Beliefs About Learning Environments (BALE) instrument has been used in a number of studies to assess knowledge of effective classrooms among preservice teachers, inservice teachers, principals, students, and parents. Interestingly, however, the results showed only small differences in knowledge among the various groups surveyed. We hypothesized that a different means of administration (focus group instead of pencil paper) would produce a stronger relationship between the amount of experience teachers have learning about and teaching inquiry approaches and their knowledge of effective learning environments. We compared the BALE results from a group of senior early childhood majors with those from a group of newly-graduated early childhood majors who participated in a year-long professional development project focused on inquiry science teaching.