Prospective Pre-School Teachers’ Attitudes towards Astronomy

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