A considerable interest in the concept of emergent curriculum has been generated by the early childhood centres of Reggio Emilia in Italy. This study traces the progress of a science project on spiders in an Australian early childhood centre which purports to have an emergent curriculum. In particular, this study sought to answer the question: What form does a science learning project take in an early childhood class that purports to have an emergent curriculum philosophy? What are the processes involved? What are the roles of the main players? Was this curriculum truly an emergent one? How did it fit with the different perspectives being taken to emergent curriculum in the literature? Did science learning take place? How did this learning fit with current views on science learning in the literature? Using a participant observation approach, this study looks at factors that characterise the processes and the players in this project and considers these in the context of current views on emergent curriculum and early childhood science. Results indicate that while the curriculum in this centre was clearly ‘emergent’, it differed in some minor aspects from both the Reggio Emilia model and the American model of emergent curriculum. The approach used was consistent with the social constructivist approach to science teaching and was clearly conductive to the children's science learning. The study shows that emergent curriculum is a very appropriate approach for science learning.

A considerable interest in the concept of emergent curriculum has been generated by the early childhood centres of Reggio Emilia in Italy. This study traces the progress of a science project on spiders in an Australian early childhood centre which purports to have an emergent curriculum. In particular, this study sought to answer the question: What form does a science learning project take in an early childhood class that purports to have an emergent curriculum philosophy? What are the processes involved? What are the roles of the main players? Was this curriculum truly an emergent one? How did it fit with the different perspectives being taken to emergent curriculum in the literature? Did science learning take place? How did this learning fit with current views on science learning in the literature? Using a participant observation approach, this study looks at factors that characterise the processes and the players in this project and considers these in the context of current views on emergent curriculum and early childhood science. Results indicate that while the curriculum in this centre was clearly ‘emergent’, it differed in some minor aspects from both the Reggio Emilia model and the American model of emergent curriculum. The approach used was consistent with the social constructivist approach to science teaching and was clearly conductive to the children's science learning. The study shows that emergent curriculum is a very appropriate approach for science learning.

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As states, districts, and teachers work to make science classes more about doing the work of science and less about remembering science facts, research is needed to show what doing science looks like. This is especially needed for the youngest students, since much of the current research studies examine the upper part of the K-12 grade range. Having been an early elementary science teacher, my work in this dissertation and beyond is focused on making the doing of science accessible to young children. One way to do science is to collect and interpret data – to measure something and make sense of changes in measurement over time. Kindergarten teachers already do this with the weather as called for in math curriculums and science standards, albeit in simplified forms with words like hot, cold, sunny, cloudy, etc. I was curious if the children could understand more complex ways of measuring the weather, using quantitative measurements with the help of a thermometer designed for young children. Over the course of three interviews for each child, I asked six kindergarteners to show illustrate different temperatures, read thermometers, and interpret graphs of changing temperatures. Based on my analysis of the interviews, my findings indicate that the six kindergarteners could all read the specialized thermometer and four of them demonstrated an understanding of how the measurements related to air temperature. This work may help with the planning of future science classes.

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The aim of this study is to investigate the changes in early childhood teachers&rsquo / views about and practices of integration of visual art into science activities that occured after they attended the workshop. In order to explore the changes in five early childhood teachers&rsquo / views about science teaching, semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and activity plans were used in this study. The study was conducted in a private preschool located in the &Ccedil / ayyolu district of Ankara. The first phase of the analysis consisted of portraying all the data related to participant teachers&rsquo / views about science teaching and the integration of science and visual art on the basis of pre-interviews, observation, and post-interviews. The second phase of the analysis involved finding out whether there was any difference between pre- and post-interviews of participant teachers in terms of their views about science teaching and the integration of early childhood science and art. Meanwhile, observational fieldnotes and teachers&rsquo / activity plans were examined based on the themes emerged from the pre- and post-interviews. The findings of this study indicated that early childhood teachers believed in the importance of science activities in their practices. They provided child-centered activities for children to improve their science experiences. In addition, they used different learning experiences that were naturalistic, informal, and structured in early childhood classrooms. In terms of the place of visual art in early childhood curriculum, all participant teachers stated the importance of visual art in early childhood settings. They also mentioned that visual art could be considered as an effective tool for teaching science because children like attending art activities. They preferred to use art activities after they implemented their science activities. Teachers also mentioned that children could easily express themselves with the help of art activities so they stated that they generally used art activities in their classroom practices.

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