The Impact of a Construction Play on 5- to 6-Year-Old Children’s Reasoning About Stability

Weber, Anke Maria; Reuter, Timo; Leuchter, Miriam

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01737

Cited by 14 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 78 publications

(178 reference statements)

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“…Therefore, the question of when basic scientific-thinking skills develop and how stable they are, is an important one. Our findings show that young children's scientific thinking and their inquiry skills are just emerging in kindergarten age, which suggests that educators and designers of learning environments need to consider children's skill level, offering them adequate degree of structure to support development (see e.g., Fridman et al 2020;Klahr et al 2011;Weber et al 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Science competencies in kindergarten: a prospective study in the last year of kindergarten

Koerber

Osterhaus

2021

Unterrichtswiss

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Science competencies are considered an important 21st century skill. How this skill develops in childhood is, however, not well understood, and in particular little is known about how different aspects of science competencies are related. In this prospective study with 58 children aged 5–6 years, we investigate the development of two aspects of science competence: scientific thinking and science content knowledge. Scientific thinking was assessed with a comprehensive 30-item instrument; science content knowledge was measured with an 18-item instrument that assesses children’s knowledge with regard to melting and evaporation. The results revealed basic competencies in scientific thinking and science content knowledge at the end of kindergarten (46% and 49% correct, respectively, both different from chance). In mid-kindergarten, children performed better than chance on the assessment of science content knowledge (40% correct) but not on the assessment of scientific thinking (34% correct). Science content knowledge in mid-kindergarten predicted children’s science content knowledge at the end of kindergarten, as well as scientific thinking (both at 6 years). The opposite pattern did not hold: scientific thinking in mid-kindergarten did not predict science content knowledge at the end of kindergarten. Our findings show initial science competencies during kindergarten, and they suggest that children’s science content knowledge and scientific thinking are interrelated in a meaningful way. These results are discussed with respect to the different hypotheses that connect scientific thinking and science content knowledge as key features of science competencies. Implications for research and teaching are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Science competencies in kindergarten: a prospective study in the last year of kindergarten

Koerber

Osterhaus

2021

Unterrichtswiss

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“…Yet, teachers' willingness to engage in a specific practice could bridge the gap between their beliefs and enacted practice. As research has shown that preschool teachers tend to prioritize play‐based activities (Leuchter & Saalbach, 2014; Sylva et al, 2007), we focus on the context of block play as an important aspect of science education (Weber et al, 2020).…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies on supporting knowledge through block play have focused on parent–child (Ferrara et al, 2011) or researcher–child interactions (Weber et al, 2020), while studies on teacher–child interactions during block play remain sparse. In block play, one of the central aspects is stability.…”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Preschool teachers' pedagogical content knowledge predicts willingness to scaffold early science learning

Schmitt

Weber

Venitz

et al. 2023

Brit J of Edu Psychol

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BackgroundThe importance of diagnostic and scaffolding activities for early science learning has been shown consistently. However, preschool teachers scarcely engage in them. We developed an instrument to assess preschool teachers' willingness to engage in diagnostic and scaffolding activities in science learning situations and examined its relation with teachers' knowledge, beliefs and practice.AimsWe validate an instrument to assess willingness to engage in scaffolding and diagnostic activities and study the interplay between willingness, learning beliefs, content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in the context of science learning, particularly block play.Sample(s)A total of N = 151 preschool teachers from 41 kindergartens in Germany participated in our study.MethodsPreschool teachers completed a questionnaire, which took approximately 1 hour of time. We drew a subsample of N = 73 teachers and observed their practice during a 30 min block play episode.ResultsWith our instrument, we were able to distinguish between preschool teachers' willingness to diagnose and to scaffold. Preschool teachers' co‐constructivist beliefs and PCK predicted willingness to engage in diagnosing, PCK also predicted willingness to engage in scaffolding. Associations between learning beliefs and practice were inconsistent.ConclusionsOur study highlights aspects of the association between preschool teachers' PCK and their willingness to engage in diagnosing and scaffolding. However, we found inconsistencies between preschool teachers' beliefs and practice, which call for further clarification.

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“…Future studies should therefore try to differentiate whether successful solutions are achieved through trial and error procedures or through the application of content knowledge. Moreover, upcoming research might investigate and compare kindergarten children's engineering behaviour in different science domains, e.g., the stability of block buildings (Weber et al, 2020), one-sided levers as simple machines (Leuchter and Naber, 2018), floating of objects (Hong and Diamond, 2012), and pursue two directions: (1) Studies should examine for different science domains whether kindergarten children can learn domain-specific content knowledge by being exposed to engineering design tasks (Lin et al, 2020;Penner et al, 1997). (2) Studies might compare children who received a training in the relevant domain-specific knowledge beforehand with children who did not receive a training (Benjamin et al, 2010;Marcus et al, 2021).…”

Section: Domain-specific Content Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

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

Reuter

Leuchter

2022

European Journal of STEM Education

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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.

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The Impact of a Construction Play on 5- to 6-Year-Old Children’s Reasoning About Stability

Cited by 14 publications

References 78 publications

Science competencies in kindergarten: a prospective study in the last year of kindergarten

Science competencies in kindergarten: a prospective study in the last year of kindergarten

Preschool teachers' pedagogical content knowledge predicts willingness to scaffold early science learning

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

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