Instructional Perseverance in Early-Childhood Classrooms: Supporting Children’s Development of STEM Reasoning in a Social Justice Context

Abstract

In early childhood education (ECE) classrooms, teachers navigate practices about how to allow space for students to make sense of new STEM-based ideas. We posit that such pedagogical moves require ample in-the-moment perseverance by the instructor. In this paper, we seek to explore the nature of such instructional perseverance in ECE classrooms and how it manifests when ECE educators are supporting young children to develop their STEM reasoning, with a primary focus on the mathematics discipline in a social justice context. Working with a dataset consisting of four ECE classroom episodes, we employed an analytical framework that captured evidence of instructional perseverance. We found that the instructional perseverance of the ECE teacher was integral to the development of STEM reasoning of her young students. We present an illustrative case that details the instructional perseverance of the ECE teacher and the related STEM reasoning of her students in the context of exploring income variance by race. We argue that teacher education development must address how ECE teachers can plan for and navigate in-the-moment instructional obstacles in order to support young students’ STEM reasoning development, which positions students for productive STEM-based outcomes.

Play, Problem-Solving, STEM Conceptions, and Efficacy in STEM: An Introduction to the STEM in Early Childhood Education Special Issue

“…These ten articles [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] demonstrate the depth of Early Childhood Education and STEM-related topics. In fact, it is critical to consider how important play, puzzles, and everyday experiences are in STEM instruction.…”

“…Essentially, findings suggest there is much to learn about relationships between teachers' dispositions when teaching, planning, and using particular planning tools. These studies [8][9][10] drew from models that took up comprehensive relationships between early childhood teachers' dispositions, planning actions, and teaching actions. For instance, by examining early childhood teachers' planning dispositions and planning actions, Burton et al [9] found these two phenomena are not necessarily directly related.…”

“…Baroody et al's [8] examination of early childhood teachers' use of a learning trajectory suggested that teachers were more efficacious when using a learning trajectory compared to those using a "Teach-to-Target" or "Skip-Level" approach. Finally, foci that included social justice frames introduced interesting questions regarding such comprehensive pedagogical content knowledge development [10]. Given the multifaceted aspect of this theme and the uneven educational experiences educators have globally in early childhood classrooms, there is much to be known about these phenomena.…”

Stem Approach to Recognition of Fractions with Traditional Anglek

“…Each group reports the gains of each member and then conveys them in the discussion. develop concepts the idea [13]. It is during the discussion that students can convey ideas or ideas regarding the activities that have been carried out, while other students can retrieve information so that knowledge transfer occurs.…”