Exploring Early Childhood Teachers’ Beliefs About STEAM Education in Saudi Arabia

This study explores Saudi teachers’ beliefs about STEAM education in early childhood education settings. The study sample consisted of 245 teachers working in kindergartens. The participants completed a survey comprising twelve items to elaborate teachers’ beliefs toward implementing STEAM practices in their classrooms, as well as four close-ended questions to evaluate teachers’ knowledge of and familiarity with the terminology of STEAM education and their professional training in STEAM-related content. The findings reveal overall positive beliefs toward STEAM education for young children and rather moderate beliefs regarding the implementation of STEAM practices. The results also reveal that teachers were somewhat familiar with the term STEAM; however, they reported limited knowledge of the integration process and basic strategies and skills needed for its implementation. The results also demonstrate that the majority of the Saudi teachers participating in this study believed they needed additional professional development and training regarding STEAM implementation. A chi-square test indicated statistically significant associations between teachers’ knowledge of STEAM education and their beliefs and between teachers’ previous professional training in STEAM education and their beliefs. The implications and future recommendations are also discussed.

Increasing Paud Teachers Knowledge About Childrens Growth Detection with KPSP

Children are the nation's most valuable asset in the future, monitoring and stimulation of growth and development is one way for children to achieve optimal growth and development. Every child needs to be stimulated and monitored regularly as early as possible appropriately and continuously, both in the family and at school. Monitoring growth and development is carried out to find out whether children grow and develop according to their age and stage of development and can detect deviations in child growth and development. The purpose of this community service is to increase knowledge and provide training to early childhood teachers regarding early detection of child growth and development. This community service method is to conduct counseling about growth and development and early detection, followed by training for early detection of growth and development. Community service results: Pretest results show that of the 35 early childhood teachers who participated in the activity, 13 teachers had poor knowledge, and 12 teachers had sufficient knowledge, and 10 teachers had good knowledge. The results of the posttest after the counseling were 35 early childhood teachers who had good knowledge. The conclusion of community service is: There is an increase in knowledge after counseling on growth and development and early detection.

The Level of Early Childhood Teachers’ Knowledge Regarding the Practices of Early Intervention for Children at Risk of Learning Disabilities

This study aimed to reveal the level of knowledge of early childhood teachers regarding the early intervention strategies for children at risk of learning disabilities. A questionnaire was designed comprising (22) items distributed in (3) dimensions, namely the practices related to pre-academic skills, basic operations and psychological concepts. This was applied to a random sample of (340) female early childhood teachers. The results indicated a high level of knowledge of early intervention practices in all three dimensions among teachers, and also statistically significant variations in the level of knowledge of early intervention practices attributed to the educational stage which is in favor of the pre-primary stage. The results also showed no statistically significant differences attributable to academic qualification, academic specialization and years of experience. Based on the outcome, the researchers recommended developing training programs to enable early childhood teachers to implement their expertise and utilize it as early intervention methods. Received: 13 October 2021 / Accepted: 15 November 2021 / Published: 3 January 2022

Barriers to the Use of Games-Based Learning in Pre-School Settings

The main aim of this research is to investigate how teachers perceive the barriers that limit the adoption and implementation of games-based learning in early childhood education on Cyprus. Teachers are working in public and private pre-schools. A 19-item questionnaire was administered to 148 early childhood teachers in Cyprus (78 public pre-school teachers and 70 private pre-school teachers). Factor analysis reveals three types of barriers to the use of games-based learning in early childhood classroom: lack of confidence, lack of support, and lack of equipment. The higher the teachers' self-efficacy in using digital games is, the lower the level of teachers' perception regarding the barrier lack of confidence becomes. Teachers with no frequent use of computer and digital games in the classroom perceive lack of confidence as a major barrier. Public pre-schools teachers have significantly more positive attitudes toward the usefulness of GBL than private pre-schools teachers.