Nursery School Teachers: Professional Acts, Professional Development, and Training in STE

In French nursery schools, teachers take charge of the content organized into teaching areas. The prescribed teaching activity "Discovering the world of living things, objects and substances" refers to biology, physical sciences, chemistry and technology. The children's learning path concerning these worlds represents the early stages of the science and technology curriculum. Many research studied these children's learning. This research focuses on teachers and aims at describing and analyzing the teaching periods dedicated to this particular area of early childhood education. In a curriculum perspective, a research about the practices that consisted in reporting information both in teachers' logs, reveals the contents, activities and issues associated with these educational experiences. There were two groups involved in this research, some teachers experienced in teaching in nursery school, and some beginners. The first result is the lack of significant difference between the two groups: practices, contents taught, ways to take charge of the science and technology education (STE) are the same. Professional development is not observed here. The second result shows that biology is privileged and preferred to technology by teachers. The research also indicates that the scientific and technological curriculum is interconnected to other teaching paths. STE is given more or less importance depending on the priorities of each teacher. 4 different ways to take charge of the STE curriculum can be suggested with data analysis. The research at last allows to discuss the professional training of preschool teachers in order to improve the teaching practices in science and technology. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.