Wu,You-Zhen
Major in Early Childhood Education
Department of Early Children Education
Graduate School of Chung-Ang University
In the 21st century, integrated education is emphasized all over the world, because STEAM education can integrate knowled...
Wu,You-Zhen
Major in Early Childhood Education
Department of Early Children Education
Graduate School of Chung-Ang University
In the 21st century, integrated education is emphasized all over the world, because STEAM education can integrate knowledge better of all field. Among them, STEAM education is needed by all age range, and especially should be start from early childhood. Infancy is a period of developing both human’s thinking and scientific curiosity.
Although China has large population, it still lacks creative talents, so it is urgent to do the research of STEAM education for the country.
In particular, the role of teachers is very important for the effective application of STEAM education to young children. In order to effectively apply STEAM education in early childhood, it is necessary to present to teachers the information about STEAM education and encourage them to put positive educational method into practice. In addition, teacher’s training must be accompanied by the goals of STEAM.The purpose of this study is to understand the knowledge of Chinese kindergarten teachers about STEAM education and how
crucial the process of teacher training is, and to provide basic data for future development and application of STEAM education program as well. The research problems of this study are as follows.
Research question 1. What is the knowledge of STEAM education among kindergarten teachers in China?
Research question 2. What is the cognition of Chinese kindergarten teachers about their training of STEAM education?
Questionnaires (Yi Mi-jin, Kim Eun-jung;2017) were used in this study. After revising on the basis of this questionnaires, the study also validated by both three professors from kindergarten education department of Daqing Normal University and an early childhood education expert. Since August 12, 2018, we have conducted a preliminary survey of 20 kindergarten teachers and from February 1st of 2019, 367 copies have been collected through mail, QQ and WeChat distribution. After the final screening, 257 questionnaires were
analyzed by IBM SSPS. The research methods being used in this study are frequency analysis and X2
(chi-square test).The results of research on Question 1: The goal of Chinese kindergarten teachers for STEAM education is to directly experience and utilize theoretical knowledge for STEAM education, and
to improve children’s interests and understanding in subjects of science and mathematics. In STEAM education, infants’ design processes of focusing on problem-solving is the most appropriate one among all ages. The results of the study on Question 2 is that during the STEAM educational training procedure, Chinese kindergarten teachers considered more suitable for them to join mixed workshops with group training and modern distance education and promoteparticipation in training classes inside of the kindergarten as for training method.