EARLY CHILDHOOD SCIENCE EDUCATION TRENDS IN TURKEY: WHERE FROM? WHERE TO?

The current study intends to review both all empirical and theoretical research for understanding and discussing the trend in early childhood science education in Turkey. A summative content analysis was conducted with a total of 136 studies including 69 graduate theses (master thesis and dissertations) and 67 journal articles published from 1999 (the beginning) to the mid-2017. Data were extracted from the full-text of articles and the theses by visiting the websites of the journals and the related databases. The search keywords mainly included the terms: early childhood, preschool, science. The studies were analyzed in terms of publication year, author collaboration, research topics, research methods, and target population. The results revealed that the number of graduate theses and articles in the field of early childhood science is continuously growing. It was identified that collaborative research efforts in early childhood science education was a leading design on the published work. Results determined that a vast majority of the papers used quantitative research methods, mainly conducting surveys and using experimental design. Children, early childhood teachers and prospective teachers were the most common study subjects in the selected papers. The research topics of environmental education, scientific process skills, teaching methods, attitudes and behaviour were received relatively more attention among researchers.