The use of story as a tool for reaching learning objectives in early science

In early science learning it is important that children experience the nature directly as this helps them learn and achieve the objectives set out in the early science learning curriculum. In cases where this is not possible, children can discover the nature and develop their knowledge by means of listening to suitable stories about nature. Even if the direct learning is made possible, a story can add to naturalistic experience. In this thesis we researched the outspread of using storytelling in kindergarten as a method of starting learning natural science and the kind of stories that are normally used for this purpose. Furthermore we established our own example of a good natural science story which we took after a well-known true story of a wolf named Slavc to let the children learn the biology of a wolf. We told this story to a group of preschool children, as well as we check the effect of the story on the children’s knowledge and their relation to the wolf. Sixty-six preschool teachers from eight Slovene kindergartens were included into our research of using such stories for learning science. We carried out a questionnaire to find out how often they use storytelling in their pedagogical process on the field of Nature. We were also interested in what stories they use for this purpose and what goals they want to reach. From all the mentioned stories we chose ten to estimate them as to their adequacy for reaching the goals of early science. We asked the children, age 3 to 6, in an early interview what they know about the wolf, its biological characteristics, behaviour, its way of living, multiplication as well as about being potentially dangerous towards human beings. In two following successive meetings with the children, we presented them our authorial story about the wolf Slavc, which includes important data about wolf’s biology, its way of living and multiplication, and about not being dangerous to people. During the second storytelling we encouraged the children to complete the fundamental story. At the next meeting we performed the final test, asking children to answer the same questions as in the starting test. And four weeks later we carried out the late final test to re-check the children’s knowledge of the wolf. The results of the questionnaire among the preschool teachers, that a big majority of them use stories also for teaching science. They most often use them as prefatory motivation, but they use them as well in the process of teaching, as a final activity or to fortify the knowledge. Two thirds of them are of an opinion that there are enough stories available in Slovenia that are suitable for reaching the goals of the early science. When we analysed ten of most often mentioned stories, the results told us that they are suitable for reaching the goals of early science only when a preschool teacher leads a conversation with children, since the fictional and the real world are interlaced. That can retard the gathering of true ideas about nature. The authors of the analysed stories in most cases wanted to make the contents closer to children by the means of human characteristics given to animals and plants. Some of these stories include also falsenesses about nature. The results of the interviews with the children showed that children knew the wolf but their initial ideas were wrong to a high degree. Their determination whether they liked a wolf or not were based on its appearance and the negative role it has in fairy tales. In comparison to the starting test, the children in the final and the late final test corroborated their opinion with new knowledge about the wolf’s biology and its typical behaviour. The results of the questions about its appearance showed that children’s ideas about it were at the beginning mostly shallow or wrong, but in the final and late final test, half of the children gave the true answers about the colour of its fur and its size. The late final test proved the true and exact answers about the wolf’s behaviour, its nutrition, the way of nutrition, living space and the way of living. The answers to the question which animal is a wolf similar to did not lead to expected results. One third of the children said in the last two tests that a wolf resembles a bear. The children also did not reach our expectations with the question if they found a wolf dangerous to people, 13 of them in the final test and 8 of them in the late final test still answered that it is dangerous. We believe that stereotypes about wolves to which they were lead through listening to fairy tales, in which a wolf plays a negative role, are too deeply grounded, so we cannot expect quick changes in this field. We arrived to a conclusion that learning through storytelling can be an effective way for children to get familiar with contents or concepts that cannot be taught by using a direct experience method or when we want to corroborate a direct experience. Although there are many quality stories with natural science related topics available in Slovene language, we would need many more in order to help kindergarten teachers – and therefore the children – get familiar with the contents that cannot be directly experienced