How to Promote Scientific Practices in Early Childhood Education: The Teachers’ Role

García-Rodeja I., Barros S., Sesto V.

This study aims to describe the implementation of a teaching sequence where preschool-age children participate in activities related with woodlice. Although there is extensive literature on inquiry-based activities, most studies have been conducted in higher educational stages. Data were collected though audio and video recordings of the sessions, which have then been transcribed. The children participated in research activities in which they had no difficulty in posing hypotheses and making predictions. In relation to the experimental design, we observed difficulties in understanding the purpose of the experiment and how to reach conclusions from the experimental results. From the results of this study, we can conclude that children from an early age can engage in inquiry activities where they are given opportunities to make predictions, formulate hypotheses, and, with the help of the teacher, plan simple experiments to test their ideas.

Wang J., Wang Y., Moore Y., Sneed S., Thacker B., Hart S.

AbstractQuestioning is a critical instructional strategy for teachers to support students’ knowledge construction in inquiry-oriented science teaching. Existing literature has delineated the characteristics and functions of effective questioning strategies. However, attention has been primarily cast on the format of questioning like open-ended questions in prompting student interactions or class discourses, but not much on science content embedded in questions and how they guide students toward learning objectives. Insufficient attention has been cast on the connection between a chain of questions used by a teacher in the attempt to scaffold student conceptual understanding, especially when students encounter difficulties. Furthermore, existing methods of question analysis from massive information of class discourses are unwieldy for large-scale analysis. Science teacher education needs an instrument to assess a large sample of Pre-service Teachers’ (PST) competencies of not only asking open-ended questions to solicit students’ thoughts but also analyzing the information collected from students’ responses and determining the logical of consecutive responses. This study presented such an instrument for analyzing patterns of 60 PST’s questioning chains from when they taught a science lesson during a methods course and another lesson during student teaching. Cohen’s Kappa was conducted to examine the inter-rater reliability of the coders. The PST’s orientations from the two videos were determined and the correlation between them was compared to test the validity of this instrument. Consideration of the data from this instrument identified patterns of the PSTs’ science teaching, discussed the importance of guiding questions in inquiry teaching, and suggested quantitative studies with this instrument.

O’Connor G., Fragkiadaki G., Fleer M., Rai P.

Over the past three decades, our understanding of science learning in early childhood has improved exponentially and today we have a strong empirically based understanding of science experiences for children aged three to six years. However, our understanding of science learning as it occurs for children from birth to three years, is limited. We do not know enough about how scientific thinking develops across the first years of life. Identifying what we do know about science experiences for our youngest learners within the birth to three period specifically, is critical. This paper reviews the literature, and for the first time includes children in the birth to three period. The results are contextualised through a broader review of early childhood science education for children aged from birth to six years. Findings illustrated that the empirical research on science concept formation in the early years, has focused primarily, on children aged three to six years. The tendency of research to examine the process of concept formation in the birth to three period is also highlighted. A lack of empirical understanding of science concept formation in children from birth to three is evident. The eminent need for research in science in infancy–toddlerhood is highlighted.

García-Carmona A.

Monteira S.F., Jiménez-Aleixandre M.P., Siry C.

We report a longitudinal study carried out along 3 years in an early childhood education (ECE) classroom in which we examined children’s (aged 3–6) engagement with science representations. The research questions are as follows: (1) How do children’s science representations develop from ECE1 to ECE3? (2) What are the features and affordances of the teacher’s scaffolding of the production of science representations and how is it facilitated from the first to the third year of ECE? The participants were 21 children and their teacher. The group was involved in long-term science projects that lasted for 5 months each. Sessions (N = 30) were recorded and children’s drawings (N = 487) gathered. Data were analyzed using discourse and content analyses, coupled with an analysis of the intensity of scaffolding. The results indicate that children’s representations of science phenomena became more complex along several dimensions. We have identified teacher’s scaffolding strategies which supported children’s increasing autonomy in producing representations. Implications are drawn for teaching science at the ECE level as well as for further research.

García-Carmona A.

Frejd J.

With the aim of exploring how science is done in collaborative interactions when children discuss reasons for animal diversity, this paper provides insight into the relationships between acts of doing science and collaborative interactions. Video data from four small-group discussions (N = 14) were analysed using Lemke’s (1990) talking science framework and Granott’s (1993) collaborative interaction framework. During their interactions, the children make use of their prior experiences and the materials provided as they engage in acts of doing science. The findings reveal that 6-year-old children are able to engage in science dialogue as they use observations and comparisons as data to generate, describe and discuss ideas. Moreover, while engaged in highly collaborative interactions, the children use observations to evaluate, challenge and question each other. Overall, the study sheds light on how acts of doing science can be perceived in young students’ discussions about science phenomena. The study indicates that the character of the collaborative interactions is an important factor for how acts of doing science are carried out.

Kruit P.M., Oostdam R.J., van den Berg E., Schuitema J.A.

ABSTRACTIn most primary science classes, students are taught science inquiry skills by way of learning by doing. Research shows that explicit instruction may be more effective. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of explicit instruction on the acquisition of inquiry skills. Participants included 705 Dutch fifth and sixth graders. Students in an explicit instruction condition received an eight-week intervention of explicit instruction on inquiry skills. In the lessons of the implicit condition, all aspects of explicit instruction were absent. Students in the baseline condition followed their regular science curriculum. In a quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test design, two paper-and-pencil tests and three performance assessments were used to examine the acquisition and transfer of inquiry skills. Additionally, questionnaires were used to measure metacognitive skills. The results of a multilevel analysis controlling for pre-tests, general cognitive ability, age, gender and grade level indic...

Mosquera Bargiela I., Puig B., Blanco Anaya P.

Se presenta un estudio sobre las prácticas científicas en el marco curricular y formación de maestros/as de infantil en ciencias. Las preguntas de investigación son: 1) ¿cómo se integran las prácticas científicas en el currículum de educación infantil?, y 2) ¿qué formación inicial y permanente recibe el profesorado de infantil para promover las prácticas científicas en el aula? Específicamente, ¿qué importancia reciben estas prácticas en su formación? La práctica de indagación es la de mayor presencia en el currículum de infantil, seguida de la modelización y argumentación. El análisis de los planes de formación inicial revela que solo dos materias de los grados en Maestro/a de Educación Infantil incluyen en sus programas las prácticas científicas. En el Plan Anual de Formación Permanente encontramos una actividad dirigida a la formación científica de este profesorado, aunque no menciona las prácticas científicas.

Cruz-Guzmán Alcalá M., García-Carmona A., Criado García-Legaz A.M.

Aun con sus dificultades y limitaciones, el aprendizaje por indagación está considerado uno de los enfoques didácticos más idóneos para aprender ciencia haciendo ciencia. A fin de ponerlo en práctica en educación infantil, se diseñó una propuesta didáctica basada en secuencias de pregunta-predicción-comprobación. La propuesta se implementó con 83 niños de 2 a 4 años. El propósito era utilizar el aprendizaje por indagación para la iniciación a la ciencia en esta etapa educativa. El tópico elegido fue el de los cambios de estado del agua, del chocolate y de un polo flash. Se apreció una evolución de las ideas y capacidades de los niños para formular predicciones y comprobarlas experimentalmente. Se concluye que es posible aprender sobre la relación entre «calentar» o «enfriar» y las transformaciones entre el sólido y el líquido. Muchos llegan a caracterizar cada producto según su estado. Como implicaciones, se estiman pertinentes las actividades manipulativas acompañadas de preguntas y requerimiento de predicciones desde el inicio de educación infantil.

Tippett C.D., Milford T.M.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in early childhood education is an area currently given little attention in the literature, which is unfortunate since young children are natural scientists and engineers. Here, we outline our mixed-methods design-based research investigation of a pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) classroom where two early childhood educators are incorporating STEM activities. We used a protocol consisting of a list of potential characteristics of effective and appropriate STEM curriculum for young children to structure our classroom observations. We also used semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and a questionnaire to collect data from multiple stakeholders (teachers, students, and parents), to examine how STEM activities were incorporated in Pre-K, to explore students’ engagement with STEM concepts, and to investigate parents’ opinions about STEM in general and STEM as experienced by their children. Our findings provide support for the inclusion of STEM-based learning experiences for young children.

Biggers M.

Questioning is a central practice in science classrooms. However, not every question translates into a “good” science investigation. Questions that drive science investigations can be provided by many sources including the teacher, the curriculum, or the student. The variations in the source of investigation questions were explored in this study. A dataset of 120 elementary science classroom videos and associated lesson plans from 40 elementary teachers (K-5) across 21 elementary school campuses were scored on an instrument measuring the amount of teacher-direction or student-direction of the lessons’ investigation questions. Results indicated that the investigation questions were overwhelmingly teacher directed in nature, with no opportunities for students to develop their own questions for investigation. This study has implications for researchers and practitioners alike, calling attention to the teacher-directed nature of investigation questions in existing science curriculum materials, and the need for teacher training in instructional strategies to adapt their existing curriculum materials across the continuum of teacher-directed and student-directed investigation questions. Teachers need strategies for adapting the teacher-directed questions provided in their existing curriculum materials in order to allow students the opportunity to engage in this essential scientific practice.

Jiménez-Aleixandre M.P., Crujeiras B.

There is a growing consensus in considering that learning science involves students’ participation in the epistemic goals of science (Duschl, 2008; Kelly, 2008) or that, as Duschl (2008) proposes, science education should balance conceptual, epistemic and social learning goals.

Marian H., Jackson C.