STEM in Early Childhood Education

How Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Strengthen Learning

Lynn E. Cohen, Sandra Waite-Stupiansky

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429843655
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Bringing together a diverse cohort of experts, STEM in Early Childhood Education explores the ways STEM can be integrated into early childhood curricula, highlighting recent research and innovations in the field, and implications for both practice and policy.

Based on the argument that high-quality STEM education needs to start early, this book emphasizes that early childhood education must include science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in developmentally appropriate ways based on the latest research and theories. Experienced chapter authors address the theoretical underpinnings of teaching STEM in the early years, while contextualizing these ideas for the real world using illustrative examples from the classroom. This cutting-edge collection also looks beyond the classroom to how STEM learning can be facilitated in museums, nature-based learning outdoors, and after-school programs.

STEM in Early Childhood Education is an excellent resource for aspiring and veteran educators alike, exploring the latest research, providing inspiration, and advancing best practices for teaching STEM in the early years.

PART I

STEM in Early Childhood Environments

1

SCIENCE IN EARLY LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Karen Worth

This book is about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). While it is useful to separate these domains for examination, young children do not learn about their world in narrowly defined subject matter domains nor are these domains entirely separate. In quality learning environments, the STEM domains overlap in multiple ways. Figure 1.1 suggests the nature of this overlap and the need to integrate the STEM areas, but it also acknowledges the need, at times, to focus on each separately to highlight domain specific skills and concepts.

FIGURE 1.1 The Integration of STEM

This chapter will focus on the S of STEM. It will examine some of the research and theoretical foundations, some of the implications for learning settings for young children, and some of the attendant policy issues.

The Concern

In a world filled with the products of scientific inquiry, scientific literacy has become a necessity for everyone. Everyone needs to use scientific information to make choices that arise every day. Everyone needs to be able to engage intelligently in public discourse and debate about important issues that involve science and technology. And everyone deserves to share in the excitement and personal fulfillment that can come from understanding and learning about the natural world (National Research Council, 1996).

In recent years, there has been an increase in concern over the quality of science education and a great deal of rhetoric about the need to improve science teaching and learning in pre-college education. However, it is important to acknowledge that this concern is not new. The early 60s saw the development of innovative elementary and secondary science curricula. In 1989, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) began its Project 2061 and published Science for All Americans (Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1989). In 1996, the National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1986) and the Benchmarks for Science Literacy (AAAS, 1993) were published.

Even improved science education for early childhood has been more than a recent subject of concern. Over the past 20 years there has been a growing acknowledgment and understanding that STEM education should begin in these early years. Many reports and publications support and illuminate the reasons, including a Dialogue on Early Childhood Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education (AAAS, 1999), Eager to Learn (National Research Council, 2001), and STEM in Early Education and Development Conference (SEED): Collected Papers, (University of Illinois, 2010). In 2014, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) published a Early Childhood Science Education: A Position Statement of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA, 2014) that was endorsed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). Recently two new reports were issued: Early STEM Matters Providing High-Quality STEM Experiences for All Young Learners (Early Childhood STEM Working Group, 2017) and STEM Starts Early: Grounding Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education in Early Childhood (McClure et al., 2017).

These documents support the belief that science education in early childhood is critical both for later science learning as well as for the development of basic cognitive skills and attitudes towards learning. These reports also present a relatively uniform understanding of the need for a child-centered, play-based, and inquiry-based approach. However, significant change in the role of science in the early childhood years is still a distant goal. The amount and quality of science taught in the younger grades as well as in childcare settings is still low. In the early grades, even the use of materials may be limited. In many settings, the new knowledge about children’s cognitive potential is not being used to broaden and deepen the science curriculum to include more in-depth and challenging experiences. Science activities often are vehicles for the development of literacy and mathematics skills as an increasing concern about reading has reinforced the almost singular focus on learning basic skills of literacy, numeracy, and socialization. This focus on the “basics” is also bringing to the early childhood setting increased pressure for accountability, leaving little room for children’s rich play and exploration of the world around them. The rhetoric and the publicity around STEM are strong, but a real public understanding of its importance, what to do about it, and how to implement change is far less so.

What We Know

Research on science learning in K-12 has a long history, but what we know about very young children’s science learning is limited as most of the research focuses on the later elementary years and beyond. Even within the years considered early childhood—ages 3 through 8 or PreK through third grade—much of the research is focused on grades 1–3. A recent publication, Research in Early Childhood Science Education (Trundle & Sackes, 2015) is one of the latest additions to surveys of existing research. The authors have covered a great deal but virtually all bemoan the lack of research and the virtual absence of longitudinal efforts. This may be due in part to a lack of a priority on early childhood in research funding, but it is also important to acknowledge the difficulty of research into science knowledge and understanding with the very young where language, both oral and written, may not reveal children’s skills, reasoning, and understanding. Therefore, much of what we know about the learning and teaching of science in early childhood is based on reasonable assumptions from developmental research, philosophical commitments, the observations and experiences of educators of young children, and the existing research into the later elementary years. There are several of those assumptions about young children’s learning that emerge from this foundation that are key to our understanding of how children learn science and, as we will see, map onto the nature of science and science inquiry, underscoring the importance of science as a major focus of the early years.

Curiosity

A baby throws her plate on the ground over and over. Four- and five-year-olds bombard us with questions: Why is the sky blue? Why does the worm wriggle like that? Where do babies come from? What happens if I jump off this rock? They make rock or shell collections, and make mixtures of sand and dirt and water to build structures. They catch and release insects and worms over and over. Six- and seven-year-olds play with flashlights and mirrors wondering about the moving light beams or identify places to find critters in the neighborhood. These kinds of actions make visible a drive to know the world. Fundamental to the thinking about science learning has been the research on very young children and the nature of this curiosity. Based on their research with infants, Gopnik, Meltzoff, and Kuhl (1999) conclude that from birth there is an innate drive to make sense of and understand the world. Babies and young children are curious because they need to reduce uncertainty and make the world a predictable place. A plate always crashes to the ground when let go. A child can jump from a small rock and not get hurt, but a big one is dangerous. A worm will quickly go underground if let go. Gopnick et al. (1999) argue that young children are driven to understand and take satisfaction in understanding. More recently, Jirout and Klahr (2012) are providing interesting support for this idea. Gopnick et al. (1999) go on to compare the drive of the scientist and that of the very young child. By titling their book, The Scientist in the Crib (and using the phrase “children are natural scientists”), they are making the case that science, in its aims and processes, resembles what young children do naturally. This idea of the relationship between young children’s drive to understand and the nature of science is reflected in the statement in Eager to Learn (National Research Council, 2001) that science is a privileged domain in the younger years, as is language and mathematical thinking.

Because these [mathematics and science] are “privileged domains,” that is, domains in which children have a natural proclivity to learn, experiment, and explore, they allow for nurturing and extending the boundaries of the learning in which children are already actively engaged.

(pp. 8–9)

This relationship between children’s curiosity and play and science is delightfully expressed by the neuro-scientist, Beau Lotto (Lotto, 2017). He describes science as a way of being that is based on five principles: 1) uncertainty, 2) openness to possibility, 3) cooperation, 4) intrinsic motivation (i.e., it is its own reward), and 5) intentional action. He then writes,

Remarkably, principles one through 4 are defined by one word: play. By “play” I don’t so much mean a literal activity as an attitude. It is about embodying playful qualities in how one approaches a problem or situation or conflict…. What do you get if you add intention to play? Science.

(Lotto, 2017, pp. 272, 274)

Early Reasoning Abilities and Theories

Young children are not just curious questioners, they are active doers and thinkers. Motivated by the need to know, they work to make sense of the world. In doing so they engage in many of what we now call practices of science inquiry. These capabilities have been seriously underappreciated (Akman, 2015). As stated in Taking Science to School (National Research Council, 2007) “… research shows that children’s thinking is surprisingly sophisticated …. Children can use a wide range of reasoning processes that form the underpinnings of scientific thinking, even though their experience is variable and they have much more to learn” (pp. 2–3). Even very young children, who may naturally ask questions and explore, also create theories and build skills in many of the science practices if supported in learning environments that spark wonder and curiosity and build on their interests and experiences.

In addition to our general domain knowledge of development, science specific research provides insight into some of what children know and the theories they have formed, although these tend to be from children at the upper age levels of early childhood. Examples include the belief that clouds are solids (Sackes, 2015), that matter is solid and inanimate (Hadzigeorgiou, 2015), and that trees are not plants (Akerson, Weikand, & Fouad, 2015). Early ideas such as these demonstrate that children construct reasoned theories about how the world works. While these naïve ideas tend to be perception bound and vary depending on an individual child’s experiences, they show the power of their reasoning and their attempts to connect what they know and to build a theory that reduces uncertainty and seems to make sense.

The Importance of Adults and Peers

Science is a collaborative endeavor. While exploration of the natural world is driven by an innate need to know and satisfaction in knowing, and while children engage in their play in some aspects of science inquiry and its practices, this work is encouraged, guided, and deepened by adults who model, mentor, challenge, guide, and provide stimulating environments and carefully designed experiences with the natural world. Developing understanding, whether by scientists or young children, comes not only through direct experiences but also through children’s relationships with others, peers and adults, as they cooperate and collaborate, share their thinking, listen to and debate the ideas of others.

THE DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE CLASSROOM

The scene is in a PreK classroom of 20 children a teacher and an aide. Much would be familiar to those who have been in such classrooms. There are areas set up around the room: a corner with books and soft cushions, a block area, a meeting area, a table and an easel for art work near the sink, a sand table with very wet sand, two round tables for different kinds of activities, shelves with a variety of materials, and colorfully decorated walls. A closer look suggests this is not quite so familiar. The book area has a preponderance of books on topics such as buildings, animal structures, and homes. The block area is enlarged, the usual props such as human figures, animals, and vehicles are on the sidelines. And on the walls is a mirror, images of structures, and photographs of children’s structures with brief captions. On two of the tables there are different kinds of small blocks including colored cubes, mini-unit blocks, and straws and connectors. A third table has only Kapla blocks. The art area has clay, and cardboard boxes, and other 3-D materials. There are partially completed creations on a nearby shelf. Through the windows can be seen in the play yard some large block structures as well as a “lean-to” made of sticks and burlap. At the meeting area, three questions are pinned to a chart: How can we make things stand up? What do we think makes things fall? What materials work best for each structure? There are children in each area bu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Preface
• PART I: STEM in Early Childhood Environments
• PART II: STEM and Higher Order Thinking Skills
• PART III: STEM Beyond the Classroom
• About the Editors and Contributors
• Index