Exploring early childhood preservice teachers’ problem-solving skills through socioscientific inquiry approach

In the light of the findings, this study promotes innovations in teaching and learning and the reorganization of Health and Safety course that encouraged the students’ engagements: it is a new strategy in fostering students’ socio-scientific problem-solving skills through inquiry learning. Moreover, not all preservice teachers in early childhood education are familiar with the steps in conducting scientific investigation that were integrated as elements of inquiry. The findings reported here indicated that this approach enabled the preservice teachers (i) to generate a meaningful learning experience, (ii) to increase motivation and interest in learning the course, and (iii) to assist in the acquisition of other important skills needed for undergraduate students. The proposed study could help lecturers to organize the content of their course and provide a relevant and cumulative framework for effective learnings. An appropriate teaching and learning should also provide students with different ways of viewing the world, communicating about it, and successfully coping with the questions and issues of daily living. Questioning and searching for answers are extremely important parts of inquiry and through this process, knowledge is generated effectively. Many studies had emphasized the relation between socioscientific issues and problem-solving skills. Since scientifically literate citizens are necessary in such a world that is continually improving in technology and scientific knowledge, teaching and learning should focus on SSI more than before. Despite the inherent limitation of this study due to its small scale and the lack of generalizability (which is not the underlying aim of this study), the findings of this research, to an extent, indicate the need for an alternative and complementary practice to the education of the preservice teachers. To date, there are not much studies conducted to explore the effectiveness of using socioscientific inquiry approach as part of the teachers’ training generally, and particularly in its relation to early childhood education. Whilst, socioscientific inquiry approach may be considered as a useful pedagogical approach in the teachers’ education, further investigation is needed in order to determine how this approach works to support preservice teachers in the scientific problem-solving process.

Acknowledgement

This project is supported by University of Malaya Learning Improvement and Teaching Enhancement Research Scheme (UM-LiTeR 2016).