Early childhood pre-service teachers’ self-images of science teaching in constructivism science education courses

The field of science education puts the constructivist approach into practice. Current efforts to realize constructivism in science education have focused on many aspects such as the purpose of science education, theories and methods of teaching and learning, and processes and assessment of education (Cho & Go, 2006a; Luxton-Reilly, & Denny, 2010; Sadhana, Stylianous, & Goldstein, 2012; Yeung, Lee, & Lam, 2012). To realize changes toward constructivism in science education, teachers should develop their professionalism in teaching science-based constructivism, including beliefs about science teaching; learners’ knowledge, processes, and strategies of science education; and their evaluation of science (Cho & Ko, 2008; Lee & Cho, 2010).

In particular, teachers’ beliefs have received considerable attention because those beliefs are mental work that influences science teaching behaviors (Markic & Eilks, 2008). They also can be a foundation for developing teaching materials and methods as well as defining the roles of teachers and learners in science education (Cho & Go, 2006b; Sadhana et al., 2012; Thomas, Pederson, & Finson, 2001). Teachers’ beliefs about science teaching have two perspectives: traditional and constructivist. Traditional beliefs toward science teaching emphasize teachers’ active roles in delivering scientific information or facts to learners and students’ passive roles in consuming the information. Constructivist beliefs place emphasis on learners’ ability to construct scientific knowledge by themselves—along with a teacher’s facilitation—while participating in the process of inquiry (Haney & McArthurs, 2002; Ogan-Bekiroglu & Akkoc, 2009; Woolley, Benjamin, & Woolley, 2004). In spite of the importance of constructing teachers’ beliefs about constructivist science education, a body of research describes that in-service teachers have more traditional perspectives about science teaching than constructivist perspectives. The studies also reported that teacher education can change the teachers’ beliefs toward constructivism, but it was difficult to alter their long-believed perspectives about science education that were developed through their teaching experiences (Lumpe, Czerniak, Haney, & Beltyukova, 2012; Go, 2005). Thus, teachers must build the beliefs of constructivist science education before they actually serve in a class. College courses about science education should provide opportunities to consider and reconstruct pre-service teachers’ own beliefs about science teaching.

Current studies emphasize that science education courses can help pre-service teachers develop constructive beliefs (El-Deghaidy, 2006; Elmas, Demirodöğen, & Geban, 2011; Go, 2013; Kang et al., 2007; Koh & Choi, 2013; Ucar, 2012; You et al., 2010). They used activities such as drawing images and doing narrative writing about teaching science as means for exploring teachers’ beliefs about science education (Thomas et al., 2001). Drawing enables many people to express their inner thoughts, which they often cannot do through written or narrative texts (Markic & Eilks, 2008). By using the images and narratives, these studies showed that pre-service teachers changed their beliefs about science teaching from traditional to constructivist views due to the influence of opportunities to watch and discuss videos of in-service teachers’ lessons, to develop the lessons in their own ways, and to learn about constructivist theories of teaching. However, these studies focused mostly on elementary and secondary pre- or in-service teachers; little research has been conducted on early childhood pre-service teachers. Unlike secondary education, which focuses on academic subjects, early childhood education has long emphasized child-centered education based on play, having accepted constructivist education under the name of interactionism.

This difference in educational context would result in early childhood pre-service teachers having different images of science teaching than those held by elementary and secondary teachers. In addition, most of this research has focused on those who changed their images of science teaching from teacher-centered to child-centered; none of them investigated those who were child-centered before even taking courses nor did they examine what aspects of courses contributed to their solidifying those previous child-centered images. Moreover, teachers’ beliefs about science education have been influenced not only by individual experiences and knowledge but also by sociocultural factors related to science or school curricula for science education (Markic & Eilks, 2008; Markic, Eilks, & Valanides, 2008). Even when titled as a science education course, course content and teaching methods depend on instructors (Koh & Choi, 2013). That is, course contexts could influence pre-service teachers’ different perspectives of science teaching and learning.

Therefore, this study aims to examine how early childhood pre-service teachers who took science education courses changed or solidified their images of science teaching. Both reviewed courses were based on constructivist science education, but they showed differences in content and teaching methods. In one course, science was taught jointly with mathematics and technology. This course emphasized providing opportunities for pre-service teachers to be in actual kindergarten classes for observing the teachers’ teaching science and having teaching experiences for young children. Another class addressed only the subject of science and placed emphasis on thinking critically about teachers’ perspectives of science teaching, executing a team project about science, and performing and discussing a simulated lesson of science. The study about the two different course settings can help to suggest effective ways to improve the quality of programs for pre-service teachers so that they may develop constructivist views with regard to science education. Thus, the purpose of this study is two-fold. First, it investigates the images of early childhood pre-service teachers after they took early childhood science education courses based on constructivism. Second, it aims to determine the factors that influence the development of those images.