Thirty-seven secondary school science (physics and chemistry) teachers in Taiwan
were selected as the subjects of this study using cluster sampling. The population
of science teachers was clustered into three demographic areas: northern, central
and southern Taiwan. Six schools from northern Taiwan, three schools from
central Taiwan and three schools from southern Taiwan were selected. The school
number ratio selected roughly corresponded to the actual junior and high school
number ratio across these three areas. For each school, one to four science
teachers, depending on the size of the school, were selected for this study. All of
these teachers taught physics and chemistry in the junior high school and high
school levels (grade 7 to grade 12). All of them had at least a bachelor degree in
physics or chemistry. Seventeen of them were female. Their teaching experiences
ranged from 2 to 20 years, with an average of 7.3 years.