Investigation of Prospective Preschool Teachers’ Skills of Evaluating the Learning Outcomes in the Preschool Curriculum in Terms of Scientific Process Skills
This study aimed to investigate prospective preschool teachers’ ability to evaluate the learning outcomes and indicators in the preschool curriculum in terms of scientific process skills. A case study and purposeful sampling method were preferred in the study. This study involved 78 prospective preschool teachers studying at a private university in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in the fall semester of the 2019–2020 academic year. The data source for the study is the documents created by prospective preschool teachers. In this study, they were first given theoretical and then applied training about scientific process skills. Parallel to this, three interrelated learning outcomes in cognitive development in the 2013 Turkish Preschool Curriculum were examined together with prospective teachers, and applied training on what the scientific process skills were in them was carried out. Then, each prospective teacher was asked to examine and classify the learning outcomes and indicators in the cognitive development domain in terms of scientific process skills. The data gathered during the study were analyzed using the document analysis method. As a result of the data analysis, it was found that they can classify the learning outcomes and indicators included in the curriculum in terms of basic and intermediate scientific process skills. Moreover, it was understood that the views of the prospective preschool teachers on the science process skills, which they stated to be included in the learning outcomes in general, and the views of the experts were parallel to each other.
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