Pre-school Teachers’ Change of Perceptions of Engineering Through a Professional Development Experience

Abstract

A STEM professional development experience for preschool teachers was implemented in this study.  This paper examined how this professional development experience changed teachers’ perceptions of engineering. Also, it was explored in this paper that what teachers could learn about engineering with this professional development experience. Thirty teachers participated in the study. The data was gathered via drawing test and participant journals. For the analysis of the drawing test, numerical coding system developed by Thompson and Lyons (2008) was used. Thematic content analysis was used for the qualitive analysis of drawing test and the analysis of participant journals. It was determined that professional development experience enhanced preschool teachers’ perceptions of engineering.  In addition, it was found that professional development experience made contributions to teachers’ realization of their mistakes/deficiencies about their own engineering perceptions and to remove them. It was determined that professional development experience had positive effects on learning content knowledge in a specific engineering discipline and supporting positive feelings towards engineering.