Early years teachers' late concerns and perceived needs in science: an exploratory study

Science in early childhood is of great importance to many aspects of children's development. Planning for improvement of science instruction should take into consideration the problems teachers encounter in their performance of their task. However, exposition of problems of early years teachers, especially those with many years of experience, is somewhat rare in science education literature. The purpose of the present work was to investigate those factors that hinder experienced early years teachers in the performance of their task in science, and their needs, as perceived by the teachers themselves. The study was carried out in Greece. One take‐home written task and two group interviews were used for data collection. Qualitative approaches were employed for the analysis of the data. The emergent themes related to teachers' problems, teachers' worries induced by these problems, problem consequences and teachers' perceived needs in science. La science sur la precoce enfance est tres importante pour beaucou...