This paper communicates the pedagogical idea of approaching scientific phenomena through verbs. The idea has sprung from a collaboration between preschool practitioners and a researcher, addressing ...science education in preschool (children aged 1-5 years). Drawing on a joint problem inventory, the project group aimed to create a teaching model that supports inquiry-oriented approaches to science, and teachers’ ability of distinguishing chemical processes and physics phenomena in everyday practice. The core idea of the teaching model turned out to be a list of everyday verbs, connected to scientific phenomena. Starting from verbs appear to help teachers to recognise the scientific phenomena in everyday practice. Further, the verbs guide the formulating of questions that can be answered by scientific inquiry, such as: ''what matters to how something melts/rolls/mixes?''.
In this article, we exemplify and discuss how preschool science education may contribute to Education for Sustainability (EfS). We draw on data from science activities in fourteen Swedish preschools, ...in which we have previously identified examples of ‘multidimensional science teaching’, hence, teaching that intertwines children’s science learning with multiple dimensions of children’s lives, such as emotions, fantasy, play and aesthetic modes of expressions. By re-analysing these activities through an EfS lense, we show several examples of how multidimensional science teaching provide opportunities for children to develop agency and empowerment as well as connectedness with the environment, and some examples of creative problem solving. Yet, we advocate that teachers’ active participation is crucial for realising multidimensional science teaching in a way that contributes to EfS.
This article seeks to provide a framework for recognizing and realizing the pedagogical potential of arts-science integration in early childhood. Herein, I present five ways of positioning arts ...vis-à-vis science and associate them with different learning opportunities. I have analyzed if and how these positionings come into play in teachers' documentation of arts-science projects conducted in eight Swedish preschool groups (children aged 1 to 5 years). These teachers positioned arts and science as disciplinary distinct (associated with acquiring and communicating knowledge in the respective subjects), as multifaceted (producing multidimensional knowledge), and as entangled (empathizing with human and nonhuman others). In addition, I discuss if and how teachers can position arts and science as inquiry oriented (investigating and identifying patterns) and disciplinary transcendent (solving problems in transdisciplinary ways). I suggest that teachers draw on these findings to plan and analyze integrated arts-science education in practice.
This article seeks to contribute new perspectives to the ontology and epistemology of preschool science education by exploring the idea of using everyday verbs, rather than nouns, to discern ...possibilities for science learning in preschool. Herein, the author merges empirical examples from preschools with findings from research on children’s noun and verb learning and posthumanist perspectives on matter and concepts. What comes out of the exploration is a radical way of viewing and knowing the world. The verbs trigger a shift from an object-oriented view of the world to seeing action and non-tangible processes and phenomena in one’s surroundings. Further, the verbs highlight the potential science learning that emerges in action and in child–matter relations, opening up to preschool science pedagogies that go beyond subjective/objective and concrete/abstract binaries.
Numerous initiatives are carried out across the world to support science teaching in early childhood education. However, professional development research shows that in order for teaching ...interventions to bring about successful changes in practice, it is key that teacher's beliefs, confidence and knowledge change. As a complement to studies showing how teachers change, this article examines why teachers adopt a pedagogical idea for teaching science in preschool. Drawing on Clarke and Hollingsworth's model for teacher professional growth, the article analyses interviews with teachers that have implemented and developed a pedagogical idea for teaching science in preschool. The results indicate that teachers adopt the pedagogical idea because it helps them to discern and build on science content in everyday practice, which they prefer to their previous way of teaching science through occasional experiments. Further the results show that teachers balance several external influences on what is good preschool pedagogy. The particular pedagogical idea eases that balancing act since it aligns with, and helps teachers to make meaning of, many of these influences.
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Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This article discusses how preschool teachers, who include a scientific content in their practice, describe their practice and their view of science in preschool. The study is based on 20 interviews ...in 9 Swedish preschools. The theoretical and analytical framework combine "communities of practice"(Lave & Wenger) and "positioning theory" (Harré & Langehove). The stories reveal a strong position for the pre-school curriculum and traditions. A prominent storyline is that Science in preschool is something different from science in school. This includes an anti-authoritarian view with a focus on "the competent child". The preschool teachers affirm fantasy, creativity and intuition as a part of science and they position science as easy to access. They also position themselves as pedagogues competent to manage science in preschool. One of the dilemmas is about letting children’s interests and initiatives drive the activities while educators curriculum- based goals have certain intentions to fulfill.
This classroom-based study aims to contribute knowledge about children’s opportunities to make use of drawing to make meaning in science. Employing a social semiotic approach to drawing, we examine ...what ways of representing science content that are (1) made available by the teacher and (2) adopted in children’s drawings. We analysed observation data from 11 science lessons in early childhood classrooms (children aged 3 to 8 years), including the drawings that children made during those lessons (129 drawings in total). Our findings suggest that the semiotic resources that teachers provide have a large impact on how children represent science content in their drawings. Moreover, we interpret that teachers strive to support children’s ‘emergent disciplinary drawing’ in science, since they predominantly provided semiotic resources where the science content was generalised and decontextualised. Finally, we propose that ‘emergent disciplinary drawing’ is incorporated as an element of science pedagogy in ECE practice and ECE teacher education.
Researchers have provided many arguments for why drawing may contribute to science learning. However, little is known about how teachers in early childhood education (ECE) make use of drawing for ...science learning purposes. This article examines how teachers' views and framing of drawing activities influence the science learning opportunities afforded to children in the activities. We use activity theory to analyse teacher interviews and observation data from ten science classrooms (children aged 3-8 years) where drawing activities occurred. The interviews reveal that few of the teachers relate drawing to science learning specifically. Rather, they portray drawing as a component of variation in teaching and learning in general. Looking at what happens in the classrooms, we conclude that drawing has a relatively weak position as means of communicating and learning science. Instead, the teaching emphasis is on writing or on 'making a product'. However, there are examples where teachers explicitly use drawing for science learning purposes. These teachers are the same few who, in interviews, relate drawing to science learning specifically. Based on these findings, we encourage school teachers, teacher educators, and researchers to identify, and overcome,obstacles to realising the pedagogical potentials of drawing in ECE science classrooms.
STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) education is currently gaining ground in many parts of the world, particularly in higher stages of the educational system. Foreseeing a ...development of STEAM policy and research also in the early years, this colloquium seeks to bring questions of gendering processes to the table. The authors aspire to prevent the development of a gender-blind STEAM discourse for early childhood education. Instead, they encourage practitioners and researchers to make use of STEAM education to recognise and transcend gendered norms connected to children’s being and learning in the arts, STEM and STEAM.
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