Abstract

This research has examined prospective preschool teachers’ views on the nature of science and scientific inquiry. The research was conducted with 54 prospective preschool teachers. Two data collection tools were employed: “Views on Nature of Science” (VNOS-C) to determine prospective pre-school teachers’ views on the nature of science and “Views about Scientific Inquiry Questionnaire” (VASI) (Lederman et al., 2014) to explore their opinions about scientific inquiry, and individualized semi-structured interviews were administered to each participant in order to determine the conceptual meanings of the prospective teachers related to the nature of science and scientific inquiry. Research findings revealed that prospective preschool teachers have inadequate views and conceptual errors with regards the nature of science and scientific inquiry. Additionally, a statistically significant difference was identified between prospective preschool teachers’ views in terms of nature of science and scientific inquiry (r=.795, p<.05).

Keywords: nature of science, scientific inquiry, prospective pre-school teachers

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