Investigation of the relationship between preschool pre-service teachers attitudes towards science and a science teaching and their understaning levels of some science concepts

Teachers? attitudes towards science and science teaching have been regardedas one of the important components for effective science education. Researchsuggests that teachers? attitudes towards science teaching not only affect theirunderstanding of science, but also their thinking and classroom practices.In this study, investigation of the relationship between preschool pre-serviceteachers?attitudes towards science and a science teaching and their understaninglevels of some science concepts has been investigated. The sample consists of 231final year students in preschool education departments in seven Universities. Thedata was collected by administering three different data collecting instrumentsnamely Science Attitude Scale(SAS), Science Teaching Attitude Scale(STAS) andScience Concepts Test(SCT).The data then was analyzed by SPSS 10 computer package. The analysisshows that preschool pre-service teachers? attitudes towards science and scienceteaching are positive. It was also found that there is a statistically significantrelationship between preschool pre-service teachers? attitudes towards science andscience teaching and the level of their understanding of some science concepts.A statistically significant relationship was also found between participants? attitudestowards science and science teaching and their scores of science concepts test.Key Words: preschool education, science edutaion, attitude towards science, attitudetowards science teaching, science concept knowledge