Construction and validation of an instrument for assessing prospective elementary teachers' attitudes and beliefs in mathematics

This research establishes the Prospective Elementary Teachers' Mathematics Attitudes and Beliefs Survey with the following four dimensions or subscales: (1) the Prospective Teachers' Personal Confidence About Mathematics (2) Usefulness of Mathematics Content (3) Perception of Former Teachers' Attitudes and Beliefs About Mathematics Ability and (4) the Prospective Teachers' Attitudes and Beliefs on Teaching Mathematics to Elementary Students. The Prospective Elementary Teachers' Mathematics Attitudes and Beliefs Survey is administered three times: once at the beginning of the Mathematics Teacher Education Course, once at the end of the Mathematics Teacher Education Course, and once during the fall of the prospective teachers' first year teaching elementary students.;The participant population consists of 289 undergraduate college students who are in an accredited elementary education licensure program. The majority are female (96%), under the age of twenty-five (89.4%), and of white ethnicity (90.3%). This study's findings for the following statistical analyses are: (1) Cronbach's alpha for reliability for whole instrument is Alpha = .95 and subscales range from Alpha = .94 to Alpha = .80; (2) The validity for the survey is established through the literature review based on the theoretical framework, pilot studies, triangulation with interviews, and content-related validity; (3) The Component Loadings calculated through the Principal Component Analysis using Promax Rotation Method with Kaiser Normalization found four factors with factor loadings of .87 to .33; (4) Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for statistical differences on individual questions on survey with Alpha = .05 found one to six questions significant on each of the four subscales; (5) Ten interviews made clear the six different categories of mathematical attitudes and beliefs represented on the survey; (6) Repeated Measures found p = .04 for whole instrument and subscales range from p = <.001 to p = .22. The conclusion of the Prospective Elementary Teachers' Mathematics Attitudes and Beliefs Survey is that it has been established as a viable instrument to measure prospective teachers' attitudes and beliefs about mathematics based on this research study.