Abstract:

The students of the Early Childhood Education degree at the Faculty of Education of Bilbao (University of the Basque Country) come across Experimental Sciences for their first and frequently only time via the 3rd course subject “Experimental Sciences in the Early Childhood Education Classroom”. Therefore, one of the objectives of the subject is to state the characteristics of science and the scientific method. In this sense, endocrine disruptors can constitute an adequate point of view from which the scientific aspects of a practice as usual in Early Childhood Education as Childcare can be studied. It provides students with a socio-scientific context that demands the application of the knowledge acquired in their future working life, which may contribute to their motivation and interest in Sciences and, therefore, to the effectiveness of the process of teaching and learning Sciences.

To this end, a series of activities around endocrine disruptors was designed for the students to carry out. It consisted of the following tasks:
1) answering a questionnaire on some of their habits that might affect their endocrine disruptors input,
2) reading various scientific publications on endocrine disruptors,
3) describing the everyday tasks of the educators,
4) writing a guide for the substitution of classroom materials that could contain endocrine disruptors,
5) portraying science and the scientific method and
6) answering the very same questionnaire they had answered before so that the impact the implemented activities had had on them might be measured.

After the implementation of the activities, the results on the questionnaires indicated an increase in the percentage of students who reported they carried out practices that could reduce their endocrine disruptors input, such as reading the food label, storing food in suitable containers and washing clothes before wearing them for the first time. However, it should be pointed out that in the explanations to the “yes” or “no” answers that students openly gave in the questionnaire, more substances were explicitly mentioned before the activities were carried out (for example, parabens) than afterwards.

Regarding the everyday tasks carried out by the Early Childhood education teachers; there was no common criterion on some of their duties: the responsibility of the teachers on the acquisition of materials, their participation in changing diapers or working at the children's canteen was different depending on the educational centre.

As expected, the series of activities on endocrine disruptors drove the students to apply their knowledge as they implemented what they had learnt in the scientific publications to build a guide to avoid endocrine disruptors in the classroom. Yet, in spite they did describe science and the scientific method, in general, they failed to do so within the studied context.

Keywords:

Professional duties, transference.