Analyses of Early Childhood Teachers' Concept Maps on Economic Education

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine early childhood teachers’ content knowledge of economic education. The subjects, 60 early childhood teachers, were asked to draw concept maps about early childhood economic education. Their concept maps were analyzed in terms of superordinate and subordinate concepts by contents and frequencies. The results were as follows. First, 248 superordinate concepts were shown, and they were categorized into nine representative terms: ‘Scarcity and Choice,’ ‘Decision Making,’ ‘Monetary Value,’ ‘Production,’ ‘Consumption,’ ‘Distribution,’ ‘Restrain,’ ‘Reuse,’ and ‘Economic Education Activity.’ Second, 1,440 subordinate concepts were shown, and ‘coin,’ ‘bill,’ ‘saving,’ ‘bank,’ and ‘money’ were frequently shown. Third, the mean numbers of subordinate concepts per superordinate concepts showed that early childhood teachers had more knowledge about ‘Consumption,’ ‘Monetary Value,’ and ‘Economic Education Activity’ than other superordinate concepts. The results showed the need for early childhood teachers to have more systematic and hierarchical pedagogical content knowledge on economic education.