VISUALIZING SUCCESS: SCIENCE FACULTY AS SCIENCE WRITING INSTRUCTORS (Invited Presentation)

Writing is integral to disciplinary discourse in the sciences and is a way for students to process new concepts and experiences. However, many science faculty do not see themselves as proficient writers and are largely unprepared to teach science writing, often exhibiting low self-efficacy in this area. Self-efficacy is the personal belief in one’s ability to negotiate a stressful task. Unlike self-confidence or self-esteem, self-efficacy depends on context and is affected by an individual’s perception of the following antecedents: personal mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and physiological reaction. This explanatory sequential mixed methods study investigated science instructor science writing instruction efficacy beliefs and identified antecedents to high efficacy. Quantitative data from an online survey that included the Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) were collected from 72 science instructors. The results of the quantitative phase guided the development of the second, qualitative phase. Responses from the 72 science instructors to two sets of two open-ended statements were coded into themes during the second phase and, using TSES scores, four instructors with high science writing instruction efficacy beliefs were identified and interviewed. Science writing instruction efficacy beliefs among the instructors who took part in this survey ranged from low- to high-levels. Thus, the lowest efficacy instructors felt that they could do nothing when teaching science writing and the highest efficacy teachers felt they had a great deal of influence when teaching science writing. Those instructors with the highest efficacy beliefs valued science writing, had experience teaching writing, integrated writing into their courses, used writing to learn (WAC) and writing in the discipline (WID) strategies, received positive feedback and faced barriers to integrating science writing in their courses.