Volume 4 Issue 3 (October 2012) - Ozean Publications

European Journal of Educational Studies 4(3), 2012
future work and careers. It is believed that children’s understanding of scientific concepts grows during their
early childhood, as early as in toddlerhood, when they actively explore their environments and construct their
own knowledge by doing and discovering (Essa, 2011). Science education therefore, needs to be integrated in
ECE, and teaching/learning of scientific concepts should form an integral part of the daily activities in ECE
centres.
Children are born with a capacity to learn, and they learn the way they learn the best. In their early years, they
are curious and are interested in exploring and motivated for learning. They explore and get stimulation and
encouragement to form scientific concepts and develop their thinking through the process of inquiry and
discovery, rather than memorizing the isolated ones. They encounter challenges to think inductively as they
classify information and get opportunities to reason, solve problems and make decisions. They can learn about
emerging scientific concepts and can be encouraged to develop scientific thinking and use certain tools that
enable testing of various concepts of living and non-living things. Activities that involve exploration and
problem solving display higher gains in various domains during early years (Gallenstein, 2004), and children
need hands-on material to believe and see it happen, because science is not intuitive.
Early educators need to create an early enthusiasm for science during this impressionable age of young children.
Experiences of scientific concepts that children encounter in everyday activities and interaction are important
and educators have to discern and use them in teaching. Careful choices of activities that incorporate children's
interests in the world around them can promote all domains of learning, in the classroom and outside. Such
activities can therefore help children focus their observation skills and provide experiences through the
exploration of volume, weight, colour, function, shape; geometric features, patterns, and texture (Gallenstein,
2004).
Teacher Knowledge Base: Teachers thus, need to be prepared for education in early childhood with a strong
knowledge base. Early educators need knowledge to be able to present different dimensions of content and
subject matter. They need to design the learning environment that gives children opportunities to develop
fundamental values, skills and understanding of different aspects. They must present activities that unfold the
basic concepts or ideas of science as an integral part of the ECE curriculum to diverse students whilst doing
many other tasks like managing classroom, assessing student performance and using technology in the classroom
(Hammond & Bransford, 2005). ECE teachers need to plan, support and guide children to learn about scientific
concepts by using various teaching strategies/techniques such as asking open-ended questions of what/how/why,
model, give feedback and encourage cognitive structuring in an environment that encourages learning through
social relationships (Fu, 2010). In addition to strong subject matter knowledge, which is the currency of
education, teachers should have a basic understanding of the crucial pedagogy and didactic knowledge that could
make them familiar with actions and strategies of teaching, organization of classroom experiences, provision for
diverse learner needs, evaluation and implementation of learner's prior notions, and transformation of ideas into
understandable pieces (Enfield, 2008). In a nut shell, they need to have a strong Subject Matter Knowledge
(SMK) and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) to be able to teach science fruitfully. It is thus obligatory to
understand SMK and PCK formally before we proceed.
According to Grossman (1990), SMK is the domain that includes knowledge of content, substantive and
syntactic areas and interacts with PCK. In SMK, the knowledge of content is the central facts within a subject
and their relationship with one another and substantive area includes central concepts, theories and terms of the
subject. Whereas, syntactic content knowledge refers, for example, to concepts in content areas, to the
agreements, norms, paradigms and ways of establishing new knowledge that is held as currently acceptable
(Smith, 1999). According to Shulman (1986), PCK might be a base of knowledge that distinguishes a teacher
from a subject matter specialist, who represents and formulates the subject that makes it comprehensible to
learners. This model is strengthened by Grossman’s model (1990) that brings the idea of teaching with
knowledge of students’ conceptions, understandings, knowledge of curriculum, instructional strategies and
representations. It explains the difference between the general pedagogical knowledge, the pedagogical content
knowledge and the knowledge of context, and the interdependence of these on each other and their interaction
with the subject matter knowledge.
For teaching of science in ECE, PCK might be more relevant as compared to SMK, as the content is not very
structured, and the subject specialists are not required for teaching science in this stage. Research shows that the
usual school subjects can hardly be transferred directly to the children in early years, whereas innovative usage
of different strategies can augment children's learning of the topics, areas of knowledge. The important point
thus, is to know how children can acquire knowledge and skills that influence their development (Hägglund &
Samuelsson, 2009); and how teachers respond to children's initiatives, interests and abilities. Pedagogy, thus
plays a substantive role at this level, as children learn about scientific concepts through numerous, everyday
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