Purpose of the study and the research questions

In this study, it is aimed to investigate inservice early childhood teachers’ conceptions of STEM education in early childhood and to understand how do they implement STEM activities in their classrooms.

This study aims to investigate and describe the conceptions regarding STEM education and classroom practices of a small group of preschool teachers in Turkey. For this purpose inservice early childhood teachers’ conceptions of STEM education will be investigated through interviews and their implementations will be observed, recorded, and documented.

In addition, it is aimed to reveal the similarities and differences between STEM conceptions and clasroom practices of early childhood teachers working in public and private schools.

Correspondingly with these purposes, the study aimed to respond to the following research questions:

1. What are STEM education conceptions of early childhood teachers working in public schools?

2. What are STEM education practices of early childhood teachers working in public schools?

3.  What are STEM education conceptions of early childhood teachers working in private schools?

4. What are STEM education practices of early childhood teachers working in private schools?

5. What are the similarities and/or differences between the STEM education conceptions and practices of teachers working in public and private pre-schools?

Conceptual Framework

In this research it is known that there is no one way of conceptualizing STEM education for early childhood teachers. Although the description of STEM education are varied (Brown et al., 2011; Bybee, 2013; English, 2016; Herschbach, 2011; Johnson, 2012), the definition of STEM conceptualization is defined for this study as, “the ability to identify, apply, and integrate concepts from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to understand complex problems and to innovate to solve them” (Balka, 2011, p. 7). This definition highlights STEM education as different from traditional learning in two key areas: content integration related to the disciplines of STEM and an approach to innovative problem-solving that we understand as including the use of the 21st Century skills of creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration (Bellanca & Brandt, 2010).

Also STEM education should promote the 21st Century skills which are creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration (Bellanca & Brandt, 2010) and lead to innovative problem-solving in authentic contexts. These skills, along with adaptability, literacy, systems thinking, self-management, and self-development have been identified as supportive of STEM education (National Research Council, 2010). STEM education is then, upholds the idea that teachers who embrace these 21st Century skills as important for student-learning and who use pedagogies that teach them can support the comprehensive thinking required of students in STEM education.

Research design: This study is designed as a qualitative study and multiple case study method is used. The qualitative approach is choosen for the study because it is necessary investigate the STEM education perceptions and the clasroom practices of the teachers in its own nature to uncover its nature. Depending on this need, qualitative methodology would be appropriate for the study. Qualitative research focus on the phenomena in order to collect profound information and detailed description (Merriam, 2009). Participants and setting of the study : Merriam (2009) claims that a qualitative inquiry should provide an in-depth description of the setting and the participants of the study. Therefore, the schools that the study will be conducted in and the participants should be well described in order to acknowledge the boundaries and details of the study. The study will be conducted in two public preschool in Kayseri. Both of the public preschools are chosen as the pilot schools for STEM education in Kayseri. The participants of this study will be two teachers from each preschool, preferably teaching 60-72 month-old preschool children. There will be approximately 20 children in each class. All of the teachers have been working in the current schools at least for three years and all of them received in-service training about STEM education and had carried out various activities, projects and collaborations about STEM education.

Since the study is not yet conducted, we do not have any findings. Proposing expected outcomes will not be appropriate for the qualitative structure of the study.

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