EARLY CHILDHOOD TEACHERS' VIEWS ABOUT SCIENCE TEACHING PRACTICES

Abstract

In early childhood education, teachers and parents can prioritise certain activities because of their contribution to cognitive development. Science activity is one of the essential content areas in early childhood education. Although children are affected by outer factors in their science learning process, the role of the teachers can be considered as the most important factors (Wylie & Thomson, 2003). In order to find out five early childhood teachers' views about early childhood science, semi-structured interviews and classroom observations were used in this study. The participating early childhood teachers were asked about their views on the implementation of science activities, the usage of science teaching methods in early childhood classrooms, the implementation of science process skills, and scientific concepts. The preliminary findings showed that all of the participant teachers preferred to apply science activities at least once in their weekly plans. Some of them focused on children's interests while some others mentioned the requirement of planning a special day. Furthermore, one participant thought that the attitudes of parents toward this issue was not adequate because most of the parents did not give importance to science learning when compared to the academic success in areas such as reading, writing, and mathematics.