Teaching and Learning Science in Early Childhood Care and Education

Research Trends and Development Perspectives in Early Childhood Science Education: An Overview

“…Nonetheless, the work done thus far, despite the drawbacks mentioned above, has created a common field of reference in research, or, to be more exact, a spectrum of research fields, the pivotal point of which is child-oriented approach to Physical and Biological Sciences. This course inevitably creates interdisciplinary research questions that stress the need for the convergence of different perspectives [20,28,57,69]. For instance, when the need arises for teaching activities regarding a specific natural phenomenon on a kindergarten level, we witness this convergence within a common study field; the process of tracing difficulties in children's thought studied by psychological research meets the processing and arrangement of subject matter studied by Science Education and the planning of pedagogical practices in the classroom studied by Preschool Education.…”

“…Indeed, these issues are related to children's initiation with the Sciences, but they also have a broader scope and are not exclusively tied to learning objectives. Thus, it is not uncommon to encounter issues in relevant bibliography such as socio-scientific questions, diversities, and inclusive education [56,57].…”

Follow the leader: Child-led inquiries to develop science learning of young children

“…When the children were responsible for developing the questions and the focus was on their inquiries, they determined how to best adapt concepts to their developmental level (Akerson, 2019). While much of the content covered across the term related directly to the biological sciences and the natural world (Larimore, 2020), there was some exploration in other science areas as well as other subject domains.…”

“…Research has similarly identified that early years' teachers lack the appropriate level of content knowledge to teach science concepts and skills (Barenthien et al, 2018;Brenneman, 2011;Nilsson & Elm, 2017). Science concepts may be seen as difficult to understand (Abdo & Vidal, 2020), as may be the underlying constructs related to the Nature of Science (NoS) itself as a starting point for teaching young children (Akerson, 2019). While the science concepts in the early years often relate to the biological sciences as children explore their natural world (Larimore, 2020), subject areas such as chemical or physical sciences may be seen as more difficult to understand and teach (Abdo & Vidal, 2020) despite being significant in young children's sciencing of the material world (Areljung, 2019).…”

“…(Saçkes, 2015). Teachers who feel inadequate in their science knowledge may lack efficacy (Oon et al, 2019) to adapt content to the early years (Akerson, 2019) which is another reason to rely on the children's questions in setting the inquiry focus as they guide what they are interested in and the types of content that could be explored. The teachers can then complete research within the areas identified by the children to ensure they are learning concepts they can engage the children with at the appropriate level.…”