Vasilis Tselfes

In this paper, we investigate the intentions of kindergarten teachers to use the content and to apply the teaching methods that they acquired in a one-day teacher training seminar. According to the theory of planned behavior, the answer to this research question is directly related to a series of social-psychological personal criteria assessments, such as an assessment of the personal gains or losses, the opinions of important third persons, the teacher’s own assessment of the value of the students’ learning, and the perceived behavioral control assessment. A total of 114 participants completed a 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire that consisted of two sets of five questions each. The results show that the kindergarten teachers’ intentions to use particular content and teaching methods are based on whether they have the skills to apply them successfully, and on their assessment of the ability of their students to acquire meaningful knowledge. The teacher’s choice of teaching method is also associated with the assessment of the personal gains or losses, as well as with the opinions of important third persons. Furthermore, the study findings show that there are two distinct categories of kindergarten teachers: those whose teaching is based on the tradition of science education, and those whose teaching is based on the tradition of early childhood education. The teaching implications of the results are also discussed.

In this study we investigated pre-service early childhood teachers’ (referred to as student teachers) beliefs that might influence their intention to use inquiry-based learning methods that have been taught on an inquiry-based science course. During this course, the student teachers (N = 17) participated in a number of classroom experiments concerning phenomena that are part of the curriculum of early childhood education, focusing on pupil’s conceptual representations using the inquiry-based approach. Moreover, the student teachers were explicitly taught the reasoning of Control of Variables Strategy (CVS) as an aspect of inquiry. A four-item open-type questionnaire on the classroom experiments that were approached through the CVS method, was used to investigate student teachers’ understanding of this method. Moreover, an eight-item open-type questionnaire and a four-item Likert scale questionnaire were used to investigate student teachers’ intention to use the CVS method in their teaching practice, focusing on attitude, normative and control socio-psychological factors. The results show the categories of student teachers’ beliefs, leading to teaching implications, and indicate a tentative relationship with an indeterminate direction. Specifically, those student teachers who understood the CVS method were influenced by control factors for its implementation, whereas the other student teachers were influenced by attitude and/or normative factors.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate teaching effectiveness in an elective science course, in the Early Childhood Education Department of Athens University in Greece. For this, a sequential mixed research design was applied to investigate freshmen beliefs about the effectiveness of their future teaching in kindergarten. An enhancement and a worsening student beliefs groups were identified based on their changing beliefs. In the first group, students were more effective in self-modeling of teaching and perceived the classroom environment in a more positive light than their fellows. Both groups asserted the need for more teaching activities.