2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Enhancing Early Childhood Educators' Knowledge of Computer Science and Engineering Concepts to Spark Young Children's Early Interest in STEM Careers
High-quality experiences with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in the pre-kindergarten years pave the way for learning about computer science and engineering in K-12 classrooms. Early, high-quality STEM learning experiences are also an essential way to attract more students to STEM course work and STEM careers. Currently however, the number of high-quality STEM education resources and materials available to preschool educators is limited. This research addresses this gap in preschool teachers’ capacity to support young children’s STEM content knowledge by developing (1) a play-based computer science and pre-engineering education program for pre-K children, (2) a web-based, early childhood teacher workforce development program, and (3) accompanying child and early childhood educator assessments. In designing these elements, the research follows four principles of early learning: (1) technology-mediated learning and pre-engineering is a natural and critical part of children’s early learning; (2) children’s curiosity about the world around them abounds and their engagement with technology is a powerful catalyst for children’s play; (3) with appropriate guidance and equity in access, children’s natural curiosity becomes the foundation for beginning to use technology-mediated inquiry skills and early problem-solving to explore the surrounding world; and (4) early exploration can be a rich context in which children use and develop important early computer science and pre-engineering skills, including programming, working as a team, communication using “pre-engineering” vocabulary, applied mathematics, and design thinking.

The study’s research questions include: (1) In what ways does the project’s infusing of play-based early computer science and pre-engineering into child development programs impact young children’s early computer science and pre-engineering knowledge, and their knowledge of and early interest in STEM careers? (2) What is the relationship between the project’s teacher professional development model and participating teachers’ content knowledge of early computer science and pre-engineering and instructional performance? and (3) What impact does the teachers’ cyber-safety focused professional development have on the cyber-safe practices of participating preschool teachers and their young students?

This research employs a modular, web-based, teacher professional development program that allows preschool educators and university STEM faculty to co-create materials and engage in teacher professional development together. This is “work in progress” research during its first year in operation. In this first year, the research team has collected data on the needs of teachers in diverse early childhood education settings related to: their knowledge of teaching pre-engineering concepts and content for children ages 3-5, their pedagogical experience using such content in their classrooms, their perceived childhood readiness for this ECE STEM, their STEM teaching efficacy and teaching social capital, and their understanding of cyber-safety both for themselves and the children and families with whom their work. These data came from teacher focus groups and multi-dimensional questionnaires. The data will be used to co-design a teacher inservice and preservice program for early childhood educators across the state. Results from this data collection are that the teachers are underly efficacious and underprepared for teaching STEM and pre-engineering to their young students, yet they have a strong desire to learn and teach such content. Furthermore, there is great variation in the amount and frequency of technology use in their classroom settings. Teachers’ knowledge of cyber-safety is highly diverse yet modest in terms of actual understanding of cyber-safety, representing a dire need for such professional development. These formative results not only inform the design, development and implementation of the teacher professional development and associated curriculum in early education STEM and cyber-safety, it also informs future research on the implementation of such work. Accordingly, in future years (years two and three ) of the research, the project will test the development, feasibility, and fidelity of its approach using a randomized controlled trial (RCT). The RCT will be scaled annually, beginning with two pilot test sites, and continuing with testing across six large sites by the project's final year. During the 2-year RCT, multivariate analyses will be used to examine whether teachers and children in the intervention group have significantly higher post-test scores than their peers in the control group. The team will regress the post-test scores on a set of control variables (race, gender, socioeconomic status), pre/baseline-test scores, and a variable representing intervention versus control to further examine whether teachers and children in the intervention group have significantly higher post-test scores than teachers and children in the control group. At the end of the project, multilevel hierarchical linear modeling will be employed comparing teachers and children in Year 3 of the RCT. In its full implementation, the project aims to produce a fully tested set of bilingual, bicultural products for national dissemination. The research products will include a fully exportable, web-based, modular early childhood educator STEM workforce training and professional development model which focuses on “junior computer science and pre-engineering” through play.