HOW MUCH SCIENCE DO WE TEACH OUR UNDERGRADUATE PRESCHOOL STUDENT-TEACHERS? A National Comparison

Drawing on a national comparison of study-guides, this study aims to compare the number of compulsory natural sciences courses, the course names, and their ECTS, in searching for any common model, regularity or principle used to construct the “Bachelor’s degree in Teacher in Pre-School Education” curricula from different Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Albania; the data are complete with the case of Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH), Greece, and University “Hasan Prishtina”, Prishtina, Kosovo which were evaluated as samples of international representatives in region. The data collected from on-line official websites of 9 Higher Education Institutions in Albania, public and private, revealed that 8 out of 9 offer this study program; 1 out of 8 has not any study-guide published on-line; 2 out of 8 offer 0 courses of natural sciences; 2 out of 8 offer one full course of natural science, with approximately the same credits (respectively 11 ECTS and 15 course ECTS), the same approach that is used by DUTH, too. However, the science course offered by DUTH has 4.5 ECTS; 2 out of 8 offer courses in natural sciences and courses in didactics of science, but the
later one can be found under a new name – science is replaced by “knowledge about science”, at both HEIs, a term or a concept entirely unknown at university level; 1 out of 8 offer only didactics of natural sciences. The main conclusion is that the current landscape of science courses in those program studies provide no option to formulate any common regularity or principle or to describe any model. We can only speculate about the many differences in science courses within this study program, highlighting the absence of a national debate on the preparation of preschool teachers and the need for national cooperation to introduce a new perspective for this program.