Integrating STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in authentic ways is often overlooked in early childhood spaces, despite young children having the ability to engage with the world around them through STEM practices. This piece showcases the work of children in a prekindergarten classroom as they explored an integrated STEM…

The Merdeka Belajar curriculum is the current curriculum developed by the Indonesian Ministry of Education, which should be implemented thoroughly in 2024. Project-based learning is identically engaged with this curriculum, which offers many advantages to enrich the quality of education. This method has been promoted and implemented in several…

Participation has been discussed as a multi-layered concept with varied outlooks on children's lived experiences. Children's participation occupies a complicated terrain in that whose participation counts and how it manifests itself within complex adult-child relations are enduring questions in the early childhood field. This qualitative study…

One of the objectives of science teaching and learning is to achieve quality science education, which involves improving initial teacher training. The use of methodologies that promote learning in science, such as the enquiry-based learning strategy, are encouraged. It is also necessary to provide appropriate contexts that give meaning to the…

Early childhood educators in the United States and worldwide face the growing challenge of "schoolification,"--the imposition of conventional academic content from later grade levels into their classrooms (e.g., Ring & O'Sullivan, 2018). The science of learning offers a different approach with evidence to support more active,…

The project described in this article took place in fall 2019 and lasted for seven months in a preschool classroom consisting of a master teacher, teacher and assistants, and 21 children (ages 3-5) within a university-based early childhood education center that serves children from birth through six years old. The teachers began the inquiry,…

Using a self-reporting measure, the study examined IBA-related beliefs of Czech preschool teachers (n = 1,004). In addition, it explored the beliefs of teachers who strongly agreed (n = 564) and those who strongly disagreed (n = 67) with the implementation of IBA in preschool classes. The findings show that teachers within the full sample, as well…

Early educators' perceptions of play and learning influence whether they adopt responsive roles to facilitate learning in play. While studies have investigated perceptions of play as pedagogical practice and its perceived relevance for learning, few have also interrogated educator learning perceptions, and hence compared these perceptions. This…

The article highlights connections between music and movement activities and emergent literacy development among infants and toddlers. I review how music is linked to phonological awareness, oral language, vocabulary, and other related skills that support reading, like executive function. I also highlight the benefits of including…

Studies into early mathematics education have reported that play, and active exploration, provide promising settings for early mathematics education (Ginsburg, 2006) as the early years is a time to engage children in a range of mathematical ideas to develop their mathematical capability (MacDonald, 2018). More recently, the Australian Association…

This study investigates the effectiveness of project-based STEAM activities on preschool children's product creation, teamwork, presentation, and engineering skills. The research is based on the technical/scientific/collaborative action research model. In determining the participants of this study, the criterion sampling method was used, one of…

Early science learning has the potential to enhance children's social interaction development, but a lack of resources in schools requires well-structured activities and a supportive learning environment. In a project aimed at helping children develop an interest in science education from an early age, this describes a Project-Based,…

Research has suggested that system-wide professional development needs to embrace ongoing and sustainable processes such as critical reflection, being within a community of practice and the co-creation of new practices within and across early childhood systems. However, there is little research on how professional development can be designed in a…

The life quality of society and the stability of national economy is largely connected with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The complex character of STEM education demands informed teaching/learning strategies in order to make the 21st century youth interested in learning. The aim of the research was to find out the views…

This study presents the research that Pramling Samuelsson's keynote at the 32nd annual EECERA conference in Brighton 2024 drew upon. The study addresses an important but understudied feature of early childhood education and care for sustainability (ECECfS), namely engaging children in prospective or what-if thinking. Our reasoning is founded on…