Abstract

Knowing and understanding child development is a key element for early childhood teachers to do their jobs well. In this research, the change or stability in the beliefs of early childhood teacher candidates during the university education are examined. In this context, maturational, behaviorists, cognitive and socio-cultural beliefs of preservice teachers were explored. The sample of the study consisted of 538 ECE teacher candidates enrolled in the first and fourth grade. In this research using the relational screening model, data were collected through the Beliefs about Developmental Scale. Two-way MANOVA was used to analyze the data. The findings of the research showed that the maturational beliefs of the pre service teachers decreased and cognitive beliefs increased in four years. Additionally, the beliefs of the students of the three participating universities were different from each other. Suggestions are presented in light of these findings.

Key words: Pre-service teachers, early childhood education, child development, developmental beliefs