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

This study is an interpretive research. Since the study focuses on the meanings attributed by pre-service early childhood teachers to the aspects of NOS emphasized before and after the three-month course, it is suitable to the nature of interpretive researches (Lawrence, 2010; Myers, 1998).

2.1 Context of the Study

The study was carried out in the Science, Technology and Environment Activities course, in which participation was volunteer-based and intended for the teachers of pre-service early childhood. The instructor of the course is author of this article. The training was spread over three months. The participants were taught each week two times in 50 minutes. The main purpose of this course is to the get the pre-service teachers to comprehend the importance of science education in pre-service early childhood stage, to acquire contemporary views about NOS, and to develop the skills to design activities for the understanding of aspects of NOS in early childhood stage.

2.2 Participants

Seventeen pre-service early childhood teachers registered to the course. The data for the study could be obtained from fifteen teachers. The age of the participants ranged between 20 and 38.

2.3 Intervention

The training span over three months is made up of three stages. The first two weeks of the training were designed as a workshop about the purpose of science education in early childhood stage, the roles and responsibilities of teachers in science education, the things to be paid attention during the design of science activities, and the importance of NOS education.

In the second stage, six activities of explicit reflective approach of NOS were implemented. These were; The Card Exchange, The Tangram, Sequencing Events, The Aging Teacher, Tricky Tracks, Hypothesis Boxes. A detailed description of these activities can be found elsewhere (Lederman & Abd-El Khalick, 1998; Doğan, Çakıroğlu, Bilican, & Çavuş, 2009; Küçük, 2006). The students worked in small groups in each activity. A whole class discussion followed each activity and in these discussions, emphasizing the target aspect of NOS explicitly was aimed at. All the in-class discussions gave the participants to talk actively about the ideas presented. For example, in the activity of Tricky Tracks, the difference between the observation and inference was discussed with the questions of “did you really see what happened in the scene of accident?” and “how did you decide what happened there?” The instructor encouraged the participants deliberately throughout the discussions to build connections between the activities they did and the real experiences of the scientists while reaching the scientific knowledge. One of them is like that: In Sequencing Events activity, the student teachers noticed the close similarity between their writing different stories from thirteen pictures and the scientists’ coming up with different theories about the reasons for the extinction of the dinosaurs resulting from the fossils.

In the last month of the course, the participants were asked to design explicit reflective activity to be used while teaching one or two aspects of NOS to very young children. While the participants were designing activities, they asked the trainer to do a group work. The participants wish was responded positively and they were given the opportunity to build their own work groups. So, everybody caught the chance to work with friends who they thought would be the most efficient. Since the participants formed groups of three and/or four, they presented four activities in total. Each week a group presented an activity which they developed themselves. The weaknesses and strengths of the activities were determined with whole class discussion and some suggestions were made to make it better. The NOS activities developed by the students are independent of science subjects like the activities taken from the literature. The activities developed by the students were introduced in Table 1.

Finally, in the last week of the lessons, the students were given a reflective writing assignment. The reading text was adapted from the preface of the book Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness by Penrose (1994; pp: 1-4). A detailed description of this reflective writing task can be found elsewhere (Abd-El Khalick & Akerson, 2004; Akerson et al., 2000).

Table 1: NOS activity of the subjects

Name of activity	NOS concepts	How the material is implemented?
Birthday cake	Theory driven	The children are divided in groups of two. The groups are given cake, cream, food coloring in three colors to color the cake, and different kind fruit such as kiwi, strawberry, and banana. Moreover, such tools such as cake topping apparatus, knife, fork and spatula. The children are asked to make a birthday cake. They can make their cakes in any shape such as round, square, and triangle and they can decorate it as they wish. The students are reminded to use each ingredient they were given while making their cakes. Although the students use the same ingredients, they can make a different cake. Although the scientists have the same data, it is discussed that they can reach different results.
Look at that paper	Tentative and interpretative	The aim of this activity is to teach the nature of science with origami. The teacher folds a square piece of paper and makes a dog, swan, crab, and a crane. For example, while the teacher is creating a dog with origami, s/he asks the children what the outcome will be after each folding step. The teacher asks the children to explain how they have decided the product to be. During this process, the teacher provides the children to be aware of the deductions they make from the data. The children’s ideas about the product may change as the steps of folding progress. This condition is associated with the tentative element of science. Moreover, the teacher makes a dog and a swan from two identical square papers. It is observed that different products come out as a result of folding the same paper differently. This condition is associated with the fact that if scientific data is interpreted differently, the scientific results.
Funny cards	Empirical	Different cards with different colors (three red, three green, three blue) and geometric shapes (three triangles, three squares, three circles) are prepared. Different objects are drawn on these nine cards (three fruits, three numbers, and three animals). So, nine different cards whose colors, geometric shapes, and objects are different are obtained. A few sets of cards are prepared from these nine cards. So, a card pool is created. Eight of the cards are given to the students. The students are asked to classify these eight cards in itself according to any features they want (Some children can classify the cards according to their colors, some according to shapes, and some of them according to the objects on them). Every child examines the classification of his/her peer sitting next to him/her. S/he asks his/her peer to add one more card from the card pool in to his/her classification. The children explain why they take this card from the card pool. A relation between using some cues while choosing the cards and scientific studies’ depending on data is established.
Listen to my tale	Theory driven and creative	Three pictures are prepared for each tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Tortoise and The Hare, Cinderella, and Tangled (Rapunzel). Twelve pictures were pasted randomly on a cartoon. The children are asked to put the pictures in correct order and create their own tales. The children tell their tales to their peers. The children are made to realize that by using the given pictures, they complete the missing parts with their own creativity and imagination and create tales. What draws attention is that by putting the same pictures in different order, everyone tells different tales. These experiences are associated with the theory driven and creative aspects of science.

2.4 Instruments

The views of the participants about the NOS were obtained with Views of Nature of Science Elementary School Version-2, known as VNOS-D2 in literature and made up of open ended questions. The main reason for the choice of this questionnaire is that it has been frequently used in the studies conducted with the primary education teachers (Akerson et al., 2007; Akerson, Cullen, & Hanson, 2010). Following the questionnaire, semi structured interviews was made with the 33% of the participants (Lederman, 2007; Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell, & Schwartz, 2002). The interview helped to understand the views of the participants more in-depth and clearly. Moreover, the interviews served for the validity of the questionnaire.

Student teachers’ ideas about the NOS instruction which they took throughout the course were obtained with narratives. On the last day of the course, the participants were asked to answer the nondirective question that is “what do you think about the activities you did in this course and the instruction carried out?” using the written expression.

2.5 Analysis

The views of the participants about the NOS were analyzed similarly to the systematic process followed by Khisfe (2008). First of all, the data of the questionnaire and the interviews were analyzed separately and compared. It was found that the questionnaire and interview data were matched with each other. This process revealed face validity. In the second stage, each view of the participants about the five target NOS aspects were categorized under no understanding, emerged understanding or informed understanding. The study conducted with the K-6 teachers by Akerson et al., (2007) guided this categorization. No understanding was designated to the answers which were given without understanding. For example, it was accepted as no understanding in tentative aspect of NOS if it was expressed that the scientific knowledge is absolute and it never changes. If a participant points both some understandings but also misconceptions, it is coded as emerging understanding. For example, a participant not only mentions that scientific knowledge can change in time but also states that science is a cluster of scientific knowledge whose accuracy is proved, the views of the participant in tentative aspect of NOS is emerged understanding. An informed view is coded when a participant has the full understanding of the concept and there is no compatibility with the answers (For instance, a pre-service teacher mentions that scientific ideas could change with the collection of new data or reinterpretation of existing data). Afterward, we generated pre- and post-instruction profiles of participants’ views of NOS. This stage consists of carrying out coding, verification and change for a few rounds. This process continued until we were satisfied with the reduction and organization of the data. In the third stage, the percentages of the students were evaluated for each target aspects of NOS in different categories (no understanding, emerging understanding and informed). The views of the students at the beginning and at the end of the study were compared. The transcriptions of VNOS-D2 questionnaire and the interviews were analyzed by the researcher and her colleague independently. Two analyses were compared and a great similarity was noticed. A consensus was reached for nearly with 10% different categorizations after negotiations.

Analysis of the narratives of participants’ relied on thematic content analysis, which is a descriptive presentation of qualitative data (Anderson, 2007; Aranson, 1994; Riessman, 2008). This type of analysis is used for making inferences about the characteristics or experiences of persons or social groups (Neuendorf, 2002; Smith, 1992). It allows themes to emerge from the data that are not imposed by the researcher (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). The following steps describe how we identified themes and analyzed them. First of all, the narratives were read, and the all the explanations related to the research questions were highlighted with a marker. The pieces that are placed in different parts of the text which make up a meaningful whole were cut and combined and a pile was formed. These piles were the first themes/categories. These piles were labeled with a word or a sentence which reflected the point emphasized. As the data continued to be coded, both new themes were revealed and also the themes created were revised. After the data were coded and the first themes were formed, the holistic meaning of each theme was read, and in the meanwhile, themes were tagged again. This process was repeated for each narrative. The original narratives were reread without taking into consideration the categories formed a few days later. The meaning of the categories formed was reconsidered. The overall categories were taken as a whole and it was decided whether there were more categories or less categories than the categories in the narratives or not. In other words, whether the categories reflected all the data obtained or not were considered. This process was repeated until a satisfaction about the categories was provided. The data was then analyzed separately by independent coders. Afterwards, the analyses were compared. Misunderstandings were resolved via negotiations. A percentage distribution was done in order to find how many of the participants in the study internalized the emanating from the narratives. Moreover, direct quotes were cited from the narratives in order to understand the views of the participants better.