Participatory Educational Research
Yazarlar: Selcah Süheyla ERGÜN
Konular:Eğitim, Bilimsel Disiplinler
Anahtar Kelimeler:Pre-school teacher,Science education,Science activities,Views on the science activities
Özet: Children have a natural and innate sense of curiosity and discovery. From infancy they use all their senses to explore their environment. Using this experience they begin to perceive, know and make sense of the environment. Children actively continue their discovery process using their information in all new activities and restructuring the information when it is necessary. Preschool education is an education process in which 0-72 months children are prepared for basic education through developmentally and individually appropriate and simulating environment which supports for their physical, mental, affective and social development in accordance with the dominant cultural values. One of the major activities of the preschool education is to guide, reinforce and improve children’s innate curiosity and motivation to learn and think. Early science education is delivered in preschool education. It is the first planned and programmed science education for children and is given under the name science and natural activities. It is based on children’s interests and needs. The aim of preschool science education is to provide children with an opportunity to learn about basic facts and events about the nature as well as to improve their affective and psychomotor skills and to help their attempts in making sense of themselves and their environment. It also tries to make children better estimations and observations. Therefore, preschool children should be offered and take part in those activities which improve their reasoning, observation, testing and interpreting skills. Preschool science activities are significant in terms of understanding the relationships between objects and events. At this stage children learn about scientific concepts through their active participation in the environment. Such activities reinforce and motivate children to pay attention, make observations and research. Teachers should make use of children’s curiosity and prediction skills to improve their scientific understanding and thinking skills. for children participating in scientific activities helps in improving the cognitive, affective and psychomotor as well as scientific skills and faciliates learning. The aim of this study is to reveal the views of preschool education teachers about the preschool science education. The study was designed as a descriptive scanning research. The participants of the study were fifty preschool education teachers working at ten preschool institutions in Afyonkarahisar province. The data of the study were collected through a survey questionnaire with open-ended items. The questionnaire was reviewed by field specialists at Afyon Kocatepe University. Based on the feedback from these specialists the questionnaire was reorganized. Then, the questionnaire was administered to the participants. The questionnaire is made up of two sections. The first section includes four items about the demographical characteristcs of the participants. The second one includes ten items about the the views of preschool education teachers about the preschool science education. The findings of the study showed that for the participants science activities at preschool education level mostly contributed to cognitive gains. They reported that they used experiment equipment for the science activities at preschool education level. They also added that the most frequently used techniques in these activities were visits, observation and demonstrations.