Prospective Pre-School Teachers’ Attitudes towards Astronomy

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the changes in prospective pre-school teachers’ attitudes towards astronomyin terms of their grades. The study was conducted with 205 prospective teachers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th graders) studying inthe education faculty of a university in Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey. Astronomy Attitude Scale (AAS) wasused as data collection instrument. One-Way Anova was used for independent groups in data analysis in order to findout whether prospective pre-school teachers’ attitudes towards astronomy differed in terms of their grades. Dataanalysis results showed that prospective pre-school teachers’ attitudes towards astronomy did not differ significantlyin terms of their grades. In addition, it was concluded that while prospective pre-school teachers had positiveattitudes such as associating astronomy with daily life, thinking that astronomy can be learned better through appliedactivities and contemporary developments about astronomy attracted their attention, they also had negative attitudessuch as feeling insecure about astronomy subjects and not liking the field of astronomy. In line with these results, itwas recommended that the number of physical sciences lessons in pre-school teaching departments in educationfaculties should be increased.