Education of future preschool teachers for cross-curricular integration of mathematics and natural sciences

Sanela Hudovernik and Nastja Cotič

Summary:  Cross-curricular integration, which promotes the child’s comprehensive development and allows to explore the world on a larger scale and in a more useful way, is of utmost importance in the pre-school period, and the knowledge children gain is more durable and global. In planning such activities, pre-school teacher must be well-acquainted with each curricular area as well as the didactic aspect in order to select and apply all the components (methods, forms and tools) and didactical levels according to the goals of the area the integration deals with. Pre-school teachers must take into consideration that the integration does not impoverish any of the fields involved. However, pre-school teachers cannot improvise the integration if they are not familiar with the approach. Therefore, it seems reasonable to train the comprehensive teaching of future pre-school teachers already in the academic years. The aim of the research was to find out what effect direct experience of interdisciplinary learning has during the professional training of students or future pre-school teachers. We wanted to find out whether the planned cross-curricular implementation of mathematics and science influences the attitudes and knowledge of students about cross-curricular integration. For this purpose, we designed an pre- and a post- questionnaire to determine whether statistically significant differences occurred before and after the elective course “Cross-curricular integration of mathematics and science”. The analysis of the responses showed that after taking the course, students were significantly more aware of the need for careful planning of cross-curricular topics, and that after taking the course they felt more competent to integrate both mathematics and science with other curricular areas.