Teaching nature of science to pre-service early childhood teachers through an explicit reflective approach

Abstract

In this study, fifteen pre-service early childhood teachers' views of nature of science (NOS) were analysed. The student teachers took a course where NOS was taught via explicit reflective approach. The explicit reflective approach advocates that goal of improving students' NOS views should be planned for instead of being anticipated as a secondary product of science-based inquiry activities. The main purpose of the course is to develop the NOS understanding of the pre-service teachers and to encourage them to develop activities to teach NOS. Six explicit reflective NOS activities were implemented. The participants developed explicit reflective NOS activity which would be used in teaching one or more aspects of NOS to very young children. It was analysed in this paper that how the course changed the NOS viewpoints of the participants and what they thought about the course. The students teachers' views of the NOS were assessed using the Views of Nature of Science Elementary School Version-2 in conjunction with semi structured interviews. The data of regarding to participants' thought about the course was obtained their narrative. Before the course, it was determined that the pre-service teachers did not have the contemporary understanding about NOS. The course contributed them considerably to obtain informed views. After the course, they felt that they liked science more, their creative thinking skills developed, and they acquired the ability to look at the events from different perspectives. © 2014 HKIEd APFSLT.