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Education Sciences
Special Issues
STEM+C for Kids: Innovations in Pre-school and Primary Education
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STEM+C for Kids: Innovations in Pre-school and Primary Education

A special issue of Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102). This special issue belongs to the section "STEM Education".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 December 2023) | Viewed by 3305

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Weipeng Yang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Early Childhood Education, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
Interests: early childhood curriculum and pedagogy; STEM/STEAM education in the early years; social-emotional learning and wellbeing; cultural and policy studies in early education
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Ibrahim H. Yeter

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore
Interests: artificial intelligence in education; computational thinking & pedagogy;design thinking; engineering education & psychology; learning analytics; machine learning education
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Globally, advancements in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and computing (STEM+C) have played a vital role in achieving innovations and sustainability in human and non-human societies. An innovative STEM+C workforce has thus become a rapidly increasing demand in human power for use in building communities and serving people. As the human brain starts to form in the earliest years of life, STEM+C education should start early and be established with coherence across education levels, especially in pre-school and primary education. STEM+C education provides an optimal solution to prepare our children for school and future attainments in related academic and occupational fields.

This Special Issue will focus on not only the interdisciplinary curriculum and instructional models that surround STEM, but also how computer programming (or “coding”) and computational thinking can be embedded into STEM disciplines. So far, in comparison, STEM+C education in adolescence and adulthood receives much more attention in the academic community, leaving the golden period of the human lifespan—the early years—rarely researched regarding this critical issue. There are a lot of controversies regarding the necessity of providing STEM and even computing education to children when they are young and may not be skillful and knowledgeable enough, mainly due to a lack of solid evidence and sound knowledge in this area. Therefore, we would like to invite submissions from a wide variety of sociocultural backgrounds, theoretical traditions, and methodological systems to debate the value of and approaches to STEM+C education in pre-school and primary education. These submissions will ultimately help showcase and promote innovation in this field.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Powerful curricular, pedagogical, and technological innovations in STEM+C education and evidence of the efficacy;
  • The integration of computing with one or more STEM disciplines;
  • Effects of STEM+C-focused programs for student learning and achievement;
  • The investigation of challenges in STEM+C education interventions;
  • Evidence-based teacher education or professional development activities that enable pre- and in-service teachers to provide excellent instruction on the integration of STEM+C disciplines;
  • Models, assessments, and technological tools to support teaching and learning in one or more STEM+C disciplines.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Weipeng Yang
Dr. Ibrahim H. Yeter
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • STEM+C education
  • pre-school education
  • primary education
  • innovation and evaluation

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 1817 KiB  
Article
Teachers in the Loop: Integrating Computational Thinking and Mathematics to Build Early Place Value Understanding
by Mai Dahshan and Terrie Galanti
Educ. Sci. 2024, 14(2), 201; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14020201 - 17 Feb 2024
Viewed by 987
Abstract
With increasing attention on the potential overlap between computational thinking (CT) and mathematical reasoning, STEM education researchers seek to understand how integrating CT and mathematics can deepen student learning across disciplines. Although there are various professional development programs that introduce teachers to CT [...] Read more.
With increasing attention on the potential overlap between computational thinking (CT) and mathematical reasoning, STEM education researchers seek to understand how integrating CT and mathematics can deepen student learning across disciplines. Although there are various professional development programs that introduce teachers to CT concepts and strategies for curriculum integration, limited research exists on how teachers might apply this knowledge to create math + CT activities for use with their students. Additionally, the majority of research on CT integration through programming has focused on upper elementary grades, leaving the early grades (K-2) relatively unexplored. This qualitative exploratory study aims to examine how teachers in a graduate STEM education program collaborated with university STEM faculty to explore and critique a set of integrated math + CT block-based programming activities designed to build place value conceptual understanding. In-service elementary teachers enrolled in an online graduate CT course for educators (n = 13) explored these activities as learners and drew on their experiences as classroom teachers to offer feedback for program redesign. A sequence of deductive pattern coding and inductive holistic coding of course transcripts, collaborative problem-solving slides, and individual teacher reflections provided insights into how teachers were able to establish connections between their mathematical knowledge related to teaching place value and their emerging understanding of CT concepts, such as abstraction, algorithms, decomposition, and debugging. Implications for the design of professional development for elementary teachers on integrating CT and mathematics are offered. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue STEM+C for Kids: Innovations in Pre-school and Primary Education)
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26 pages, 5888 KiB  
Article
Characterizing Child–Computer–Parent Interactions during a Computer-Based Coding Game for 5- to 7-Year-Olds
by Hoda Ehsan, Carson Ohland and Monica E. Cardella
Educ. Sci. 2023, 13(2), 164; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13020164 - 03 Feb 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1496
Abstract
In this study we characterize ways that interactions children have with their parents and a coding game can support them in engaging in computational thinking. Taking a qualitative approach, we analyzed the video-recordings of 14 families of 5-to-7-year-old children as they played a [...] Read more.
In this study we characterize ways that interactions children have with their parents and a coding game can support them in engaging in computational thinking. Taking a qualitative approach, we analyzed the video-recordings of 14 families of 5-to-7-year-old children as they played a computer-based coding game in an engineering and CT exhibit at a small science center. The findings revealed a variety of different types of interactions children had with the coding game and with their parents. We discuss the opportunities these interactions provided for children’s engagement in different CT competencies. While aspects of the computer interaction were crucial for children’s CT engagement, some interactions did not occur in ways that encouraged children’s use of CT. Parent–child interactions played a very important role in enabling the children’s computational thinking. Overall, we believe the parent–child and child–computer interactions complemented each other to fully engage children in CT. We provide implications for practitioners and designers who aim to support children’s engagement in different CT competencies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue STEM+C for Kids: Innovations in Pre-school and Primary Education)
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