Investigation of preschool and classroom teachers' attitudes to science teaching and their use of the experiment method

The aim of this research is to examine the attitudes of preschool and primary school teachers towards science teaching and their use of the experimental method. In the realization of the research, the scanning model was used. The Attitude Scale Towards Science Teaching was developed by Thompson & Shringley (1986), revised by Cho, Kim & Choi (2003), and Turkish validity and reliability were verified by Adak (2006). The research includes pre-school teachers and primary school teachers working in 872 kindergartens and independent kindergartens in public schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the provinces of Ankara, Bursa, Düzce and Kırıkkale in the 2021-2022 academic year. Descriptive and predictive/interpretive quantitative analysis techniques were used. Because the scale data did not fit the normal distribution, Mann Whitney U tests were used for the differences between paired groups and Kruskal Wallis tests were used for the difference between more than two groups. Spearman's rho correlation analysis was used in relational screening analysis. All analyzes were performed at 95% confidence interval and 0.05 significance level. Research findings show that the attitudes of preschool teachers and primary school classroom teachers towards science teaching are generally high. There is a statistically significant and negative correlation between the science teaching attitude score and the information source and educational need. Again, there is a statistically significant and positive relationship between the attitude towards science teaching and education level, seeing adequate, using the experimental method and participating in in-service training. The relationship between years of service and attitude towards science teaching is not statistically significant. Another finding of the study is that there is no statistically significant difference between the science teaching attitude levels of preschool teachers and classroom teachers. Although the majority of the teachers participating in the research consider themselves sufficient in teaching science and natural sciences, the number of those who consider themselves somewhat sufficient is quite high. Preschool and classroom teachers should be given practices such as seminars and conferences on the methods and techniques they feel inadequate in science education along with science education. Teachers complain about the lack of tools, equipment, materials and physical environment with a rate of 68.20%. For this, the physical conditions of the schools should be improved, a suitable environment should be created by taking into account the needs, and the classes should be enriched in terms of materials. It was revealed that the material that the teachers stated to be the least necessary in the classroom while teaching science and applying the experiment method was the internet. In this regard, trainings and seminars can be given to teachers so that they can use web 2.0 tools, applications such as simulation and online laboratory more effectively. In general, almost all of the teachers stated that they use the experiment method in teaching science and natural sciences. Keywords: attitude towards science teaching, experiment method, classroom teacher, preschool teacher