Science Education in Early Childhood Teacher Education: Putting Forward a Case to Enhance Student Teachers' Confidence and Competence

New Zealand is moving towards increased qualification requirements for early childhood educators. There is an underlying assumption that there is a correlation between quality early childhood education, teacher qualifications and quality practices in teaching and learning. Two fields of literature, early childhood pedagogy and science specific pedagogy, are reviewed briefly to provide a framework with which to consider why student teachers' attitudes, misunderstandings and misconceptions in science can limit their ability and willingness to create quality teaching and learning opportunities. The study reported in this paper highlights, in general, that early childhood student teachers' subject knowledge in science was poor. It also emerged that the student teachers were unaware of how little they knew and how this might affect their ability to provide appropriate science experiences for young children.