An Analysis of the effectiveness of quality indicators in early childhood education on subsequent science competency on a cross-country and Turkish case basis

Download

index.pdf

Date

2014

Author

Kaya, Elif

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

368
views

216
downloads

The main aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of early childhood education on children’s subsequent science competency in PISA assessment. In doing so, the influence of country-level and student-level factors on children’s later competency on the PISA science literacy were also examined. Country-level indicators were determined following variables from past records: public and private expenditure in pre-primary education, pupil-teacher ratio, enrolment rate in pre-primary, duration in pre-primary, starting age to pre-primary education, individual countries adult literacy rate, and income per capita. As for student-level indicators, these are: attending pre-primary education, level of mother’s education, mother’s occupation, and student’s gender. By using PISA science scores for both country-level and student-level analysis, the indicator which serves as the most significant predictor in explaining later science competency was examined. According to this study’s findings, public expenditure, pupil-teacher ratio, income, adult literacy rate and starting age to pre-primary education were effective factors influencing children’s subsequent science performance on the PISA assessment. Furthermore, adult literacy rate was the only variable which had significant influence on later science performance for three country groups. Moreover, student-level analysis revealed that children perform better in the PISA science literacy as their number of years of attendance in pre-primary education and level of their mother’s education increase. Additionally, mother’s occupation and student’s gender also have potential influence on later science competency. The findings also have important implications for improving the provision of Turkish early childhood education in each of these indicators. Moreover, there is an urgent need to keep up with the international trend in pre-primary education.

Subject Keywords

Education, Preschool., Early childhood education., Science

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12618081/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/24159

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

A case study on transdisciplinary approach of integrated curriculum perspectives of early childhood teachers Özer, Özden; Erden, Feyza; Department of Early Childhood Education (2010) The purpose of this study is to examine teachers’ beliefs and perspectives about an applied transdisciplinary approach of integrated early childhood curriculum. While developing an integrated curriculum for early childhood education, one of the challenges for educators is delivering the themes into different disciplines. For this reason, researchers have developed different models to integrate disciplines in different ways. Transdisciplinary approach is one of the models developed for integrated curriculum....
An Investigation of preservice early childhood teachers’ levels of individual innovativeness and perceived attributes of instructional computer use Yılmaz, Nursel; Olgan, Refika; Department of Early Childhood Education (2013) Based on Rogers‟ (2003) Diffusion of Innovations theory, this study aims to investigate preservice early childhood teachers‟ innovativeness level and perceived attributes of computer use in early childhood education. Moreover, the differences between adopter categories regarding the perceived attributes of computer use and communication channel preferences were examined within the scope of this study. For these purposes, this study was designed as a quantitative research and data were gathered by three scal...
Early childhood teachers’ views about and practices with differentiated instruction in the primary years programme Özkanoğlu, Özden; Erden, Feyza; Department of Elementary Education (2015) The aim of this study was to investigate the views and practices of early childhood teachers on differentiation. In order to explore the research questions, 19 pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers of an International Baccalaureate (IB) world school in Turkey were interviewed about differentiation, their written curriculum documents were analyzed, and the classrooms were observed. This study was designed and conducted as a qualitative case study. As the case, an authorized International Baccalaureate P...
Examination of early childhood educators' perspectives on transdiciplinary approach. Demirci, Fatma; Demircan, Hasibe Özlen; Department of Early Childhood Education (2020) A research study was conducted to investigate the perspective of early childhood educators on transdisciplinary approach. The participants of study were 20 early childhood educators who worked in public kindergartens Bartın, Turkey. The data was collected with a semi- structured interview. Findings of study demonstrated that early childhood educators have positive perspectives on integration of disciplines. Also, early childhood educators have positive perspectives on transdisciplinary approach such as inte...
Perceptions of early childhood teachers towards young gifted children and their education Tezcan, Feride; Tantekin Erden, Feyza; Department of Early Childhood Education (2012) The aim of the study is to investigate early childhood teachers’ perceptions towards young gifted children and their self-reported needs for meeting needs of young gifted children. In order to reach this aim, interviews with 15 early childhood teachers were conducted. The interview questions were designed to explore three aspects of teachers’ perceptions on young gifted children: perception on giftedness as a concept, perception on characteristics of young gifted children and perception on gifted education....

Citation Formats

E. Kaya, “An Analysis of the effectiveness of quality indicators in early childhood education on subsequent science competency on a cross-country and Turkish case basis,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2014.