The Relationship Between Preservice Early Childhood Teachers’ Cultural Values and their Perceptions of Scientists’ Cultural Values

Source: Journal of Science Teacher Education, Volume 21, Number 2, 205-214. (March, 2010).
 
The current article describes research that compares preservice early childhood teachers’ cultural values and the values they believe are held by scientists.

Using the Schwartz Values Inventory (SVI) (Schwartz , 1992) preservice early childhood teachers cultural values were assessed, followed by an assessment of the values they believed were held by scientists.

Schwartz postulated that cultural values could be aggregated into 11 domains: universalism, benevolence, tradition, self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, power, conformity, spirituality, and security.

Paired T-tests indicated significant differences between preservice early childhood teachers’ cultural values from those they believed scientists held on the domains of power, achievement, stimulation, benevolence, conformity, and security.

The discussion explores the meaning of these results and provides implications for early childhood science teacher education.

Reference
Schwartz, Shalom H. (1992). Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries . Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25:331–351.