Early Childhood Science Education: Research Trends in Learning and Teaching

This volume consists of a collection of articles that touch on very different research aspects within a broad scientific field known in recent years as Early Childhood Science Education. The field has gradually emerged from the interaction between three distinct scientific areas of theory and research: Early Childhood Education, Psychology, which is oriented towards the study of learning, and Science Education. At the center of the progress in this field are efforts to initiate children aged 4-8 years in the Physical and Biological Sciences. A wide range of research themes have developed around this main axis: children's mental representations of phenomena of the natural world and scientific concepts, the study of the implementation and effectiveness of specific teaching activities related to curricula or activities focusing on the specific characteristics of teaching processes such as reasoning, explanation, communication, interaction or argumentation, the issue of teachers' relevance to the teaching of science, the use of pecialized teaching materials, the emergence of the issue of scientific skills, the highly contemporary issue of the differentiation and inclusion of children in the world of science, important socio-scientific issues, the role of family-related factors etc. Within this context, this collective book aims to reflect contemporary research trends in the field of Early Childhood Science Education

EARLY CHILDHOOD SCIENCE EDUCATION TRENDS IN TURKEY: WHERE FROM? WHERE TO?

The current study intends to review both all empirical and theoretical research for understanding and discussing the trend in early childhood science education in Turkey. A summative content analysis was conducted with a total of 136 studies including 69 graduate theses (master thesis and dissertations) and 67 journal articles published from 1999 (the beginning) to the mid-2017. Data were extracted from the full-text of articles and the theses by visiting the websites of the journals and the related databases. The search keywords mainly included the terms: early childhood, preschool, science. The studies were analyzed in terms of publication year, author collaboration, research topics, research methods, and target population. The results revealed that the number of graduate theses and articles in the field of early childhood science is continuously growing. It was identified that collaborative research efforts in early childhood science education was a leading design on the published work. Results determined that a vast majority of the papers used quantitative research methods, mainly conducting surveys and using experimental design. Children, early childhood teachers and prospective teachers were the most common study subjects in the selected papers. The research topics of environmental education, scientific process skills, teaching methods, attitudes and behaviour were received relatively more attention among researchers

Preschool Teachers’ Preparation Programs: The Use of Puppetry for Early Childhood Science Education

This paper investigated how puppetry could be used to improve the standards of early childhood science education. This study determined the effect of a puppet-making and puppetry workshop on preservice preschool teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards science education and looked into their experiences during and after puppet-making. Although participants faced some difficulties during the workshop, they developed numerous socioemotional skills. Puppetry activities can help preservice teachers learn how to deliver child-centered, stimulating, and interactive classes. Using puppets in early childhood science education can help teachers develop positive attitudes towards science and offer students high-quality, engaging, and creative activities

Funding Childhood Science: Life or Death

This thesis draws the connection between an individual’s early childhood science education, health literacy comprehension, and quality of health. A better understanding of science leads to an increased understanding of health, benefiting the individual’s own health care as a result. Thus, proper and equitable educational funding of schools for all districts, regardless of income wealth, is essential to public health. In this thesis I propose that integrating effective science curricula into early education can work to reduce disparities in health literacy and ultimately benefit public health. I wish that this thesis will bring awareness to not only the importance of science education, but the notion that education is a positive contributor towards health

Children’s understanding of representations of basic chemistry after participating in an early childhood drama pedagogical activity

The purpose of this study is to generate insight into how young children in early childhood science education understand representation. Taking many forms: gestural, material and verbal (Gilbert, 2005), representations are critical to science education, already with young children. The empirical data for our analysis consist of interviews conducted with 6-year-old children after having participated in a playfully-formatted activity (van Oers, 2014) in basic chemistry held at a culture centre for children. The interviews are analyzed as social practice, clarifying how the children respond to the conceptual and communicative challenges they face. The results show that there are important differences in how the children show that they understand the forms of representations used in the activity. What these differences are and why they are critical to developing representational insight and basic scientific understanding, and therefore what educational implications our findings have, are discussed

Perceptions about Student Diversity and Equity in Early Childhood Science Education: A Teacher Preparation Study

Using a mixed-methods approach, the current study examined the relationship between early childhood preservice teachers' cultural awareness and their self-efficacy in equitable science education. It further aimed to determine if the relationship between these two constructs was moderated by their race/ethnicity or the number of languages they speak. Finally, it sought to identify preservice teachers' understanding of equity in science education, as well as how they planned to incorporate the equity concept into their future science teaching practices for diverse learners in early childhood classrooms. Data for this study were drawn from 380 preservice teachers who self-enrolled in a science methods course as part of a teacher preparation program. To measure the preservice teachers' cultural awareness and self-efficacy in equitable science education, two Likert-scale instruments, Cultural Diversity Awareness Inventory (CDAI) and Self-Efficacy Beliefs about Equitable Science Teaching and Learning (SEBEST), were employed. Qualitative data were collected by administering six open-ended questions. For quantitative results, statistically significant findings indicated that when the participants were more aware of creating a multicultural environment and instruction and/or when they were less biased and were more sensitive/knowledgeable about diversity of students and families, their expectations about science learning of students from diverse backgrounds would be higher. Furthermore, when the participants were more aware of creating a multicultural environment and instruction and/or when they felt more comfortable about confronting students or parents whose cultures and languages were different from their own, they tended to have a stronger sense of efficacy in teaching science to those students. In addition, when the participants were less biased and were also sensitive and knowledgeable about students' and families' diverse backgrounds, they were more likely to have a strong sense of science teaching efficacy. Along with these findings, participants' race/ethnicity was a statistically significant moderator affecting the relationship between their sense of science teaching outcome expectancy and awareness of creating a multicultural environment and instruction. When the awareness of creating a multicultural environment and instruction of both White and non-White participants were increased at an equal level, White participants' expectations for science learning of students from diverse backgrounds were higher than those of non-White participants. Measurement challenges were identified through the analysis process that compromised the validity of the quantitative findings. Thus, they should be interpreted with caution. For qualitative results, three predominant themes related to the participants' conceptualization of equity in science education were identified. First, the participants harbored alternative understandings of the definitions of equity in science education. One third of the participants understood equity as providing appropriate access and support based on the levels of students' needs whereas another one third defined equity as providing identical teaching services and resources to all students regardless of their backgrounds. They also conceptualized equity in science education as an issue independent of their future students' racial/ethnic backgrounds; instead, they regarded it as a subject associated with their students' English proficiency