An Investigation of Preschool Teacher Candidates’ Content Knowledge on Angular Shapes

Purpose of this study was to investigate preschool teacher candidates’ content knowledge on angular shapes (triangle, square, rectangle) expected for children to be acquired in Turkish preschool educational curriculum. In this study, case study which is one of the qualitative research methods was used. In this study, 97 preschool teacher candidates were selected by convenience sampling method. Participants were offered a written interview form which was developed by researchers. In this form, teacher candidates were expected to define each shape, to give daily life examples of each shape and to draw examples of shapes. Two different researchers used summative content analysis to analyze the data, to be able to obtain inter-rater reliability. Findings related to teacher candidates’ definitions, examples and drawings were represented under different categories. According to the results of this study, preschool teacher candidates have inadequate content knowledge on identifying angular shapes and giving daily life examples. Besides they have sufficient content knowledge on drawing examples of angular shapes. Recommendations were made in accordance with results.

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