Research on the interplay between preschool teachers’ dispositions, practice and children’s learning in block play
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Previous research has shown the importance of early science, technology, engineering, and math education for children’s knowledge, as it establishes a groundwork for their later learning and academic achievement. However, the engagement of preschool teachers especially in science learning activities is infrequent, and some teachers still pronounce the belief that science education is inappropriate for the early childhood years. Furthermore, there is a lack of clarity regarding the connections between teachers' attitudes (including their knowledge, beliefs, and willingness) towards teaching early science and their actual teaching practice, as well as the subsequent effects of teacher practice on children's learning outcomes. This dissertation primarily aims to clarify these associations. Block play offers the possibility to link scientific concepts (e.g., stability) to children’s everyday activities and thus represents an age-appropriate way to examine young children’s STEM-learning. The present dissertation encompasses three research articles, focusing specifically on the interplay between preschool teachers’ dispositions and practice in block play and 4- to 6-year old children’s knowledge. The first article focused on the validation of a self-developed instrument to assess preschool teachers’ willingness to engage in science teaching and examined the predictive power of teachers’ willingness for teachers’ practice. Results suggested that the instrument measured teachers’ willingness reliably and validly, however, teachers’ willingness did not predict their practice in block play. The second article examined the relationship between the preschool teachers’ instructional quality during block play and various aspects of children's knowledge. Specifically, the study explored how instructional quality in block play influenced children's knowledge in stability, math, and spatial language. Additionally, children’s academic self-concept and cognitive aspects (i.e., intelligence, working memory) were considered. Results implied that preschool teachers’ scaffolding activities were related to children’s stability knowledge in block play. Moreover, teachers’ instructional quality was positively correlated with children’s academic self-concept in block play. The primary focus of the third article was on implementing a block play curriculum. Therefore, study 3 employed a longitudinal design to assess the effectiveness of a teacher training on teachers’ practice with the curriculum, which included both, guided and free play. Teachers were randomly assigned to either a control group or an experimental group. The experimental groups received training with the block play curriculum, while the control group did not receive any training. Results showed no change in teachers’ knowledge before and after training. Nonetheless, teachers in the experimental group applied more scaffolding after the training. Furthermore, preschool teachers applied more scaffolding during guided than during free play. Children’s math score in the experimental group, but not in the control group, significantly improved from pre- to post-test. In the general discussion, the findings of the three articles are reflected in the light of the interplay between teachers’ dispositions and their teaching practice as well as the impact of teacher practice on children’s knowledge. Besides, the discussion reflects on methodological difficulties of empirical studies in early childcare settings, providing a prospective view on multimethod approaches for future research. Taken together, the present dissertation contributes to a more profound understanding of how teacher practices and children's knowledge interact. Further, the research holds great relevance for practical application as it illustrates the differential effects of teacher training on preschool teachers’ knowledge and their teaching practice.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".