How to improve the society-service course: Early childhood education teacher-candidates’ experiences in the project “Do you want to be a child for one-day?”

Creativity and creative thinking are considered important skills for early childhood education [ECE] teacher-candidates to have because they are expected to cultivate those skills of their own students in future. One of the undergraduate courses at the university is the society-service course, which provides teacher-candidates an opportunity to use their creativity and creative thinking skills. In the current research, I look at how a society-service project entitled “Do you want to be a child for one day?” could be improved to better meet instructional objectives and benefit society. A group of ECE teacher-candidates organized a one-day-long festival in the campus. They aimed to bring university-students and children together, to get university-students to feel like a child for one day and to create stronger bonds between the university and society in general. In the festival preschoolers and university-students had a chance to work together at art, science, math and drama tables and to dance together. The research utilized the living theory methodology for data collection and analysis. Teacher-candidates answered a survey, which focuses specifically on the perspectives of teacher-candidates on improving this project for the future. Based on the results, as the professor of the course, I also made suggestions.