Preparing Preservice Early Childhood Teachers to Teach Nature of Science: Writing Children's Books

Abstract

Preparing preservice early childhood teachers to teach about Nature of Science (NOS) in their science lessons can provide challenges to the methods course instructor. Early childhood science methods course instructors generally agree that early childhood preservice teachers enjoy using children’s literature in their instruction. Preservice teachers can write and design children’s books that can help them to not only refine their own understandings of NOS aspects, but also to consider how to introduce these ideas to young children through their stories. These stories can support the teaching of NOS through hands-on activities in the classroom. The authors tracked a class of early childhood preservice teachers over the course of a semester to determine their ideas about NOS and their depictions of NOS in a storybook they designed for young children. The authors determined whether these NOS ideas were depicted accurately and in a way that could be conceptualized by young children. It was found that nearly all of the preservice teachers were able to portray the NOS aspects accurately through their stories, and that not only did the stories hold promise of introducing these NOS ideas in an engaging manner for early childhood students, but the preservice early childhood teachers also refined their own understandings of NOS through the assignment.