Examining Kindergarten Children’s Testing and Optimising in the Context of a Gear Engineering Task

Abstract

Introducing kindergarten children to the engineering design process (EDP) is an important objective of early STEM education. Studies indicate that children often miss the crucial steps of testing and optimising during the EDP and do not persist in making solutions better. The present study explores how children's goal awareness, self-evaluation ability, domain-specific content knowledge, spatial skills and intelligence relate to their persistence, testing and optimising behaviour and to solution quality. In a standardized procedure, 41 children (4 to 7 years) in Germany worked on an engineering task in the domain of gears. The engineering process was videotaped, children's testing and optimising, solution quality, goal awareness, self-evaluation, and task persistence were rated with a coding scheme and with interviewer questions. Domain-specific content knowledge, mental rotation ability and figural reasoning were measured with standardized tests. Correlational analyses indicated that goal awareness was positively related to solution quality. However, most children required support by the interviewer to retrieve the goal specifications. Moreover, children's self-evaluation was negatively related to task persistence. Most children were satisfied with their first solution, even when it did not meet the requirements. Our findings emphasize the important role of teachers in helping children to tackle challenges with the EDP.

Domain‐specific knowledge and domain‐general abilities in children's science problem‐solving

“…The turning speed knowledge task (Reuter & Leuchter, 2022a) contained nine items with one to three connected gears of the same size in the upper half of the screen. In the lower half of the screen, three grey gears of different sizes were displayed.…”

“…However, few studies on children's engineering examined the role of domain‐specific content knowledge for problem‐solving. Reuter and Leuchter (2022a) investigated problem‐solving with 4‐ to 7‐year‐olds in the domain of gears. The task involved connecting two gears fixed on a board so that they turn in the same direction.…”

“…The task involved connecting two gears fixed on a board so that they turn in the same direction. Based on the rule that adjacent gears turn in opposite directions, the children had to use an odd number of additional gears to successfully solve the problem (Reuter & Leuchter, 2022a). The results revealed no significant correlations between domain‐specific rule knowledge (i.e., turning direction of adjacent gears) and quality of the problem solution (Reuter & Leuchter, 2022a).…”

“…Smaller gears turn faster around their own axis compared to larger gears (Reuter & Leuchter, 2021). Several studies have shown that children's domain‐specific rule knowledge regarding gears' turning direction and turning speed develops during early school years and can be fostered through playful interventions (Lehrer & Schauble, 1998; Reuter & Leuchter, 2021, 2022a). In the study by Reuter and Leuchter (2021), most 7‐ and 8‐year‐olds had the correct domain‐specific rule knowledge, whereas the majority of 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds did not.…”