Nowadays, science is all around us. Although modern life can’t be conceived without science, scientific literacy in our society is far from adequate. Recent developments in science have heightened the need for producing scientifically literate people. This growing understanding of the value of scientific literacy is at the heart of studying science subjects in schools. As such, education scholars are seeing early childhood as an appropriate time for building the conceptual foundation of scientific literacy that incorporates recent understandings of the nature of science (Schwartz, Lederman, & Abd‐el‐Khalick, 2012). The nature of science education as a key aspect of scientific literacy has received considerable critical attention particularly in early childhood classrooms (Bell & Clair 2015). Along with this growth in teaching and learning the nature of science to children, there is increasing concern over two major issues that emerged: (1) What is developmentally appropriate to teach and (2) How do teachers teach science effectively. The content of science for kindergarten children is a sophisticated interplay among major aspects of the nature of science including scientific knowledge and the process of doing science (Duschl, Schweingruber, & Shouse, 2007), which provide an image of science teaching and learning in the early childhood classrooms in which teachers and children engage. The reader should bear in mind that in our work, we have only focused on these two aspects of the nature of science—scientific knowledge and scientists who carry out scientific investigations. Children are predisposed to learning about science by nature (Eshach & Fried, 2005). However, it is important to mention that young children can be different than older children and adults in terms of what they need to know, how they carry out science investigations, and how they conceptualize scientific concepts due to mostly their limited experiences. Previous studies have reported that young children can learn most of the aspects of the nature of science only through appropriate science instruction with the guidance of a teacher. However, a major problem with early childhood science is that low teacher self-efficacy, which is typically an outcome of the lack of knowledge of teachers (Gerde et al. 2018). For that reason, numerous studies have paid attention to the development of strategies for promoting teachers’ confidence and knowledge for science instruction (Mulholland & Wallace, 2002; Watters & Ginns, 2000). Regarding this problem, recent debates have continued about the more emphasis on language and literacy instruction in the early years rather than an increase in the opportunities for science education (French & Woodring, 2012; Guo et al., 2016). All in all, one may suppose that teachers are considered as the keystone of science education in early childhood education. Clearly, this indicates a need to explore how teachers conceptualize the nature of science before they implement it themselves. Preservice teachers generally enter the classroom with a range of preconceptions of science along with their past experiences in their daily lives (Abell & Smith, 1994). It is therefore important to notice that the repertoire of preconceptions brought by preservice teachers should be taken into consideration during the teacher education programs before they teach science education in real classrooms (Aguirre, Haggerty, & Linder, 1990). This paper gives an account of what pre-service teachers in the field of early childhood education possess understandings of scientific knowledge and constructs regarding scientists.

The purpose of the current study is to explore personal constructs of early childhood pre-service teachers regarding scientific knowledge and scientists on the basis of the view that teachers’ opinions about scientific knowledge and scientists influence the way they teach. It was decided for the current study to select a new method, which as well as providing an in-depth survey of pre-service teachers' views about the scientific knowledge and scientists, would also result in slightly more quantitative descriptions. Therefore, we used the Personal Construct Theory from Kelly (1955) and his Repertory Grid Technique for the exploration of mental constructs. In line with the purpose of the study, the presented approach was applied to a case study. Following these considerations, the study seeks to answer the following questions: 1. What are the personal constructs of early childhood pre-service teachers regarding scientific knowledge and scientists? 2. How do early childhood pre-service teachers perceive scientific knowledge and scientists? The present study was conducted at a Faculty of Education in a northwestern city in Turkey. 119 early childhood pre-service teachers were involved in the study. The age of the participants ranged from 20 to 32. The majority of the participants (n = 91, %77.1) were female and the rest of them (n = 27, %22.9) were male. Half of the participants were junior and the other half of them were senior students. The participants were invited to a session in which repertory grid interviews were conducted by following steps: (a) At the beginning of the repertory grid session, the grid was introduced and explained how to fill it into each participant. (b) Each participant was asked to produce a list of three people who are called scientists and a list of three people who are not called scientists. (c) Each participant was asked to think about how two of them are similar to each other, and at the same time differ from the third one. All of the elements were included in one or more triads. The categories obtained from the constructs. Based on these elements and constructs, a matrix was formed (elements in columns, constructs in rows). (d) Finally, each participant was asked to rate the matrix in the grid on a scale of 1 – 6 (1 = the construct is not important to the element, 6 = the construct is very important to the element).

The 119 pre-service teachers registered 702 positive constructs regarding scientists and 683 positive constructs regarding their perceptions of scientific knowledge. The preliminary findings regarding scientific knowledge display that of the total 683 positive constructs, 54 were used twice or more. There were 16 positive constructs, which were most frequently mentioned more than 10 times. So ‘objective’ was mentioned 56 times, ‘global’ 32 times, ‘verifiable’ 52 times, ‘produced through critical thinking’ 10 times, ‘tentative’ 20 times, ‘reliable’ 17 times, ‘well-accepted’ 22 times, ‘based on experiments’ 24 times, ‘systematic’ 21, ‘socially beneficial’ 29 times, ‘valid’ 13 times, ‘certain’ 19 times, ‘consistent’ 28 times, ‘cumulative’ 19 times, ‘observable’ 34 times, ‘measurable’ 12, ‘progressive’ 14 times and ‘product of logical reasoning’ 19 times. With respect to the preliminary findings regarding scientists, of the total 702 positive constructs regarding scientists, 62 were used more than one. 20 positive constructs were most frequently mentioned more than 10 times. “Researcher” was mentioned 54 times, “curious” 34 times, “creative” 31 times, “studious” 29 times, “wise” 28 times, “determined” 25 times, “innovative” 25 times, “questioner” 23 times, “observer” 22 times, “patient” 19 times, “critical thinker” 13 times, “objective” 11 times, “persistent” 10 times, “knowledgeable” 12 times, “open-minded” 19 times, “eager to learn” 13 times, “socially-beneficial” 17 times, “logical” 15 times and “love of books” 11 times. The paper summarizes the results of a survey study that examined the views of a range of early childhood education pre-service teachers using a method derived from personal construct theory. The results of the study have a number of implications for early childhood education and provide pointers to the provision of pre-service education in this area.

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