Integrating STEM into Preschool Education; Designing a Professional Development Model in Diverse Settings

Brenneman, Kimberly; Lange, Alissa A.; Nayfeld, Irena

doi:10.1007/s10643-018-0912-z

Cited by 76 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Another intervention by Brenneman, Lange, and Nayfeld [46] sought to impact early childhood educators' attitudes and beliefs, knowledge, and teaching practices in STEM via a research-based professional development model. This effort is unique in that the design of the model itself is based on concrete best practices in what we know about early childhood STEM learning, as well as best practices in adult learning to fully support and build capacity for the participating educators.…”

Section: Empowering Teachers To Be Science Thinkers and Learnersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This model for collaborative professional development and learning, shown to positively affect student achievement [47], is applied in this model to supporting STEM in early childhood settings. The teachers reported that these three aspects of the model improved their STEM practice [46]. A randomized control trial testing the intervention reported significant growth in teachers' and coaches' attitudes and beliefs around teaching STEM, as well as STEM knowledge [48,49].…”

Section: Empowering Teachers To Be Science Thinkers and Learnersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Early Childhood Science and Engineering: Engaging Platforms for Fostering Domain-General Learning Skills

2018

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Early childhood science and engineering education offer a prime context to foster approaches-to-learning (ATL) and executive functioning (EF) by eliciting children’s natural curiosity about the world, providing a unique opportunity to engage children in hands-on learning experiences that promote critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, persistence, and other adaptive domain-general learning skills. Indeed, in any science experiment or engineering problem, children make observations, engage in collaborative conversations with teachers and peers, and think flexibly to come up with predictions or potential solutions to their problem. Inherent to science and engineering is the idea that one learns from initial failures within an iterative trial-and-error process where children practice risk-taking, persistence, tolerance for frustration, and sustaining focus. Unfortunately, science and engineering instruction is typically absent from early childhood classrooms, and particularly so in programs that serve children from low-income families. However, our early science and engineering intervention research shows teachers how to build science and engineering instruction into activities that are already happening in their classrooms, which boosts their confidence and removes some of the stigma around science and engineering. In this paper, we discuss the promise of research that uses early childhood science and engineering experiences as engaging, hands-on, interactive platforms to instill ATL and EF in young children living below the poverty line. We propose that early childhood science and engineering offer a central theme that captures children’s attention and allows for integrated instruction across domain-general (ATL, EF, and social–emotional) and domain-specific (e.g., language, literacy, mathematics, and science) content, allowing for contextualized experiences that make learning more meaningful and captivating for children.

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Section: Empowering Teachers To Be Science Thinkers and Learnersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Empowering Teachers To Be Science Thinkers and Learnersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Childhood Science and Engineering: Engaging Platforms for Fostering Domain-General Learning Skills

2018

Self Cite

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“…The process-focused view brings together research that examines social interactions, discourses in students' collaboration, communication or collective meaning-making (Brenneman et al 2019;Tabach and Schwarz 2018). In the following, we will detail the process-focused view more thoroughly, since it is of special interest for this article.…”

Section: An Overview Of the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

An inferentialist account of students’ collaboration in mathematics education

Seidouvy

2019

Math Ed Res J

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Collaboration is an increasingly popular topic in mathematics education due to its potential to foster students' learning. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to the semantic philosophical theory of inferentialism and its value for investigating students' collaboration. We suggest that Brandom's inferentialism can serve as a valuable theoretical resource to overcome certain issues of existing theoretical viewpoints on student collaboration. In particular, we argue that inferentialism may help to understand the individual and social nature of collaboration as intertwined. We illustrate our inferentialist approach using data from two scenes taken from video-recorded group work sessions from a fifth and seventh grade primary school class in Sweden. The topic in both classes was data generation in statistics.

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“…Following Rogers et al (1988), the activities are designed on the basis that involvement of children is beneficial for their learning process, using their innate curiosity as a starting point (McIntyre, 1984;Piaget, 1971). Educational games and activities have been recognized as a valid strategy to enhance student engagement and develop key skills that may be applicable in other contexts, such as the ability to work as a team (Butucha, 2016;Garris et al, 2002). Students learn as a consequence of playing, which promotes meaningful learning (Croxton and Kortemeyer, 2018).…”

Section: Oh-kids: a Stem Outreach Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this regard, a good strategy for promoting meaningful learning is the development and implementation of educational activities through the exposure of pupils to a realworld application of STEM (Smith et al, 2005). The argument behind this effort is that, in order to produce the next generation of problem-solvers, education should ensure that learners develop an appreciation of and a working familiarity with STEM disciplines and human-environmental systems (Brenneman et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An innovative STEM outreach model (OH-Kids) to foster the next generation of geoscientists, engineers, and technologists

et al. 2019

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Abstract. Childhood education programmes aiming at incorporating topics related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have gained recognition as key levers in the progress of education for all students. Inspiring young people to take part in the discovery and delivery of science is of paramount importance not only for their well-being but also for their future human development. To address this need, an outreach model entitled OH-Kids was designed to empower pupils through the development of high-quality STEM learning experiences based on a research project. The model is an opportunity for primary school learners to meet geoscientists while receiving the take-home message that anyone can get involved in scientific activities. The effort is part of a research project aimed at the real-time monitoring of precipitation in Mexico City, which is a smart solution to rainfall monitoring using information and communications technologies. The argument behind this effort is that in order to produce the next generation of problem-solvers, education should ensure that learners develop an appreciation and working familiarity with a real-world project. Results show success at introducing the role of researchers and STEM topics to 6–12-year-old learners.

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Integrating STEM into Preschool Education; Designing a Professional Development Model in Diverse Settings

Cited by 76 publications

References 44 publications

Early Childhood Science and Engineering: Engaging Platforms for Fostering Domain-General Learning Skills

Early Childhood Science and Engineering: Engaging Platforms for Fostering Domain-General Learning Skills

An inferentialist account of students’ collaboration in mathematics education

An innovative STEM outreach model (OH-Kids) to foster the next generation of geoscientists, engineers, and technologists

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