STEM activities for children aged 4–7 years: teachers’ practices and views

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to investigate teachers’ practices and views of STEM activities for children aged 4–7 years old. The participants are 18 Greek teachers and data is collected via interviews. Commonly reported reasons for the importance of STEM education are the development of skills, knowledge, and children’s interest for learning, while the skills children develop, include collaboration, communication, socialisation, problem-solving, experimentation, critical thinking, programming, creativity, and language/literacy. STEM activities implemented in class are programming, robotics and interdisciplinary activities, as well as experiments and exploration of materials. The primary factors considered when preparing STEM activities are children’s interest-motivation, their cognitive level or age, and the learning outcomes. Teachers’ perceived challenges mainly regard experiential learning, children’s interest and active participation, while main problems include limited time, infrastructure, and teacher training. Implications for educational policy-practice and teacher training are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• STEM
• early childhood
• preschool
• teacher practices
• teacher views

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank all teachers who participated voluntarily in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Declarations

Ethics approval

Approval was obtained from the ethics committee of the Department of Early Childhood Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant.