The pre-school teachers' attitudes towards science teaching and their views on scientific and natural activities

The aim of this research is to examine the attitudes of pre-school teachers towards science teaching and their views on scientific and natural activities. The sample of the research is constituted by the pre-school teachers who worked in the city center of Elazığ in the 2018-2019 academic year. The sample of the research is constituted by the 203 pre-school teachers quantitatively, and 63 pre-school teachers qualitatively from the city center of Elazığ by using the appropriate non-random sampling method. In the research, mixed method which includes quantitative and qualitative research designs has been used. Descriptive survey model was used in the quantitative research, while the case study design was used in the qualitative research. In the collection of the quantitative data, "Attitude Scale Towards Science Teaching" was used which was developed by Choi,Kim and Cho(2003) and then adapted for pre-school teachers by Çakmak(2006) in a Turkish version. "Attitude Scale Towards Science Teaching" consists of 17 items. The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient for the overall scale is 83. In the collection of the qualitative data, "interview form for scientific and natural activities" was prepared by the researcher, and the semi-structured interview technique was used. In the research, the quantitative data were analyzed through the SPSS package program. Frequency, percentile, mean, "t" test and "one-tail analysis of variance (ANOVA)" tests were used in order to analyze the data. In the qualitative data of the research, descriptive analysis was used. When the findings that are obtained from the study were evaluated, it was seen that the attitudes of preschool teachers towards science teaching were high level. According to the research findings, there is no significant difference in pre-school teachers' attitudes towards science teaching by means of the variables of gender, years of seniority, the school where the teacher works, and the group of age that the teacher educates. In the the qualitative research, pre-school teachers stated that the scientific and natural activities have the property of incentivizing towards the engagement in research conduction. In addition, they stated that they mostly use plants while doing scientific and natural activities. They emphasized that they especially attach importance to safety while using the materials, and that they frequently use the experimental method in scientific and natural activities.