Science from the Start provides informal science learning opportunities for children, mainly those of pre-school age, along with support and information for their parents/carers. Activities use free or low cost materials to facilitate recreation or expansion at home and address a broad range of scientific topics, often linking with wider local, national or international science awareness events to give extra context. Science from the Start has received funding and support from the Lancashire County Council, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the British Society for the History of Science, the British Pharmacological Society, and STEMnet.
This collaborative project between Tufts University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is researching and developing a new version of the Scratch programming language to be called ScratchJr, designed specifically for early childhood education (K-2). The current version of Scratch, which is widely implemented, is intended for ages 8-16 and is not developmentally appropriate for young children. This work will provide research-based evidence regarding young children's abilities to use an object-oriented programming language and to study the impact this has on the children's learning of scientific concepts and procedures. The team will develop ScratchJr in an iterative cycle, testing it in both in the Devtech lab at Tufts and the Eliot Pearson lab school and with a wider network of early childhood partners. At the end of the three-year project, ScratchJr will have been tested with approximately 350 students in K-2, 40 parents, and 58 early childhood educators. ScratchJr will have three components: 1) a developmentally appropriate interface, with both touch screen and keyboard/mouse options; 2) an embedded library of curricular modules with STEM content to meet federal and state mandates in early childhood education; and 3) an on-line resource and community for early childhood educators and parents. The research questions focus on whether ScratchJr can help these young children learn foundational knowledge structures such as sequencing, causality, classification, composition, symbols, patterns, estimation, and prediction; specific content knowledge; and problem solving skills. This interdisciplinary proposal makes contributions to the fields of learning technologies, early childhood education and human computer interaction. ScratchJr has the potential for broad implementation in both formal and informal settings.
Intellectual Merit: The Science Museum of Minnesota and Purdue University's Institute for P-12 Engineering Research and Learning are conducting a study within out-of-school contexts that will explore gender differences in the development of engineering interest and understanding in children between the ages of 4 and 11. During the study, the researchers will closely examine three specific informal environments: a pre-school program where parents and children can engage with engineering focused activity, a family-oriented engineering event for elementary students and their parents, and an engineering exhibit within a science museum. These settings, each featuring a high level of parent-child interaction, have been intentionally chosen due to an emerging trend in engineering education research that identifies the parent as playing a crucial role in girls' decisions regarding engineering careers. The project will examine the ways in which engineering practices (such as the iterative design, build, and test cycle) impact the development of interest and understanding. The study focuses on studying children during the critical years before middle school, when girls have been shown to have significantly lower levels of interest in engineering than boys. Broader Impacts: Investigating the processes by which girls develop early interest and understanding in engineering is essential to addressing the persistent underrepresentation of women in engineering fields. Informal learning experiences, such as interactions in the home, visits to museums, and other everyday encounters, represent a rich array of settings for the development of engineering interest that have been minimally researched. The project will share results from the study through traditional academic channels, and also through parent and practitioner workshops for informal science educators that disseminate useful practices and techniques for engaging girls in engineering at a young age. In addition, the partnership between the Science Museum of Minnesota and Purdue University creates a strong foundation for subsequent collaborative projects focused on researching informal engineering education. The project has the potential to significantly impact the ways in which girls begin to cultivate a lifelong interest in engineering, which may ultimately encourage more women to pursue engineering careers in the future.