New Perspectives in Science Education

Edition 13

Accepted Abstracts

Contents and Topics Developed by Pre-Service Teachers when they Design Nature Field Trips in Early Childhood Education

José María Marcos-Merino, University of Extremadura (Spain)

Emilio Costillo Borrego, University of Extremadura (Spain)

Elena Bravo Lucas, University of Extremadura (Spain)

Rocío Esteban Gallego, University of Extremadura (Spain)

Javier Cubero Juánez, University of Extremadura (Spain)

Abstract

There is a multitude of research that emphasise the importance of teaching scientific content at different school stages, even in pre-service teachers, because science is present in curricula at all educational levels [1]. Nevertheless, there has been a shortage of studies destined at teaching and learning science in Early Childhood Education in issues such as training of teachers of Early Childhood Education about what to teach, how to do it or what scientific content can learn their students. Developing activities in the outdoors and in touch with nature is something necessary for all students, and is especially relevant in the earliest educational stages. A really interesting methodological resource to introduce sciences in classrooms are nature field trips [2, 3]. With the objective of that future teachers will be able to reflect on this need and their own teaching practice, the creation of videos has been incorporated as an activity in the subject “Knowledge of the Natural Environment in Early Childhood Education”. In these videos, future teachers should simulate a nature field trips in an Early Childhood Education classroom. The current work is focusing on the kind of content that pre-service teachers will work on and the topic related to the nature field trips developed in a class with students from 3 to 6 years. Therefore, we analysed through a qualitative methodology a sample of 72 videos made by pre-service teachers of the Degree in Early Childhood Education. These videos have been analyzed by WebQDA online software. The results show the majority of pre-service teachers will develop conceptual contents instead of the procedural or attitudinal contents. Also, most of them will choose to work topics related to the fauna and flora of the same environment visited or about trees in general rather than other topics such as animals, fruit trees or geology themes as a caves or rocks. These results suggest that future Early Childhood Education teachers carry through the same type of lesson outdoor that in classrooms, without significant changes. That study was supported by Project EDU2016-77007-R of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of Spain, and Project IB16140 of the Junta de Extremadura.

Keywords: Nature field trips, pre-service teachers, early childhood education, Biology education, video analysis.

References:
[1] Stanley, W. B., & Brickhouse, N. W. (2001). Teaching sciences: The multicultural question revisited. Science Education, 85(1), 35–49.
[2] Aguilera, D. (2018). La salida de campo como recurso didáctico para enseñar ciencias. Una revisión sistemática. Revista Eureka Sobre Enseñanza y Divulgación de Las Ciencias, 15(3), 3103.
[3] Costillo, E., Borrachero, A. B., Esteban, R., & Sánchez-Martin, J. (2014). Aportaciones de las salidas al medio natural como actividades de enseñanza y de aprendizaje según profesores en formación. Indagatio Didactica, 6(3), 10–22.

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