The world of a young child is full of “wow.” Children are constantly observing, exploring and discovering phenomena around them. From those activities they build models of how they think the world works and make predictions from those models. That’s the essence of science, although we seldom use that term for what we see our children do every day.
Early this year a select committee of early childhood experts and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Board and Council came together to formulate a position statement emphasizing the vital importance of science learning in the preschool years. They reaffirmed a progression of experiences and skills that begins during ages 3 through 5 and its place in the overall mission of the association. And just last month the board of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) joined us by endorsing that statement. By sharing our perspectives and increasing the lines of communication between the associations, we begin an important collaboration.
Here are some key points from NSTA’s position statement, Early Childhood Science Education:

• Young children have the capacity for constructing conceptual learning and the ability to use the practices of reasoning and inquiry (NRC 2007, 2012). In previous decades, many educators underestimated the capacity of young children to reason in the context of their physical experiences (structured play.) Today’s best practice calls for increased attention in this area.
• Experiences can best contribute to science learning when an adult prepares the environment for science exploration, focuses children’s observations, and provides time to talk about what was done and seen (NAEYC 2013, p. 18). Key words here are “time” and “talk.” The NGSS practice of scientific argumentation begins at the earliest level. But first we listen.
• Children need to have opportunities to engage in science learning in informal settings, such as at home with cooking activities and outdoor play or in the community exploring and observing the environment. Communicating with parents and other mentors is essential. They always want to support school experiences, but benefit when their educational partners help them see how best to bridge the home-school connection.
• Young children need opportunities for sustained engagement with materials and conversations that focus on the same set of ideas over weeks, months, and years (NRC 2007, p. 3) A science experience isn’t like a flu shot; one experience doesn’t create lasting ideas. The progressions of experiences and investigations that occur again and again are key to building understanding and models that work.
• The range of experiences gives them the basis for seeing patterns, forming theories, considering alternate explanations, and building their knowledge.. Multiple and varied experiences keep science constantly exciting. Physical, life and Earth sciences are all part of the 3-dimensional learning described by the Frameworks for K–12 Science Education.

An endorsement by our partners at NAEYC is, of course, exciting. But that vote is just the beginning. We will be working both within the association and with all early childhood educators to increase our understanding of and resources for this important level.
NSTA has already begun to expand its publications at the early childhood level. Editor Linda Froschauer has introduced many more articles for this level in Science and Children, and a column by Peggy Ashcroft continues to support teachers there. Resources like Page Keeley’s Uncovering Student Ideas in Primary Science (NSTA, 2013) help teachers increase their sensitivity to preconceptions and address them with the sorts of progressive experiences needed at this age. Workshops are planned all year and further publications will follow. The association has also partnered with both NAEYC and the International Reading Association as exhibitors and participants in their conferences, with cordial invitations to come to us as well.
But there is a lot more to be done. It is true all too often that the educators of older students misunderstand or underestimate the vital importance of high quality early childhood science education. Here’s an example I encountered in a conversation not too long ago: I was discussing a measurement activity for kindergarten students with a secondary teacher, who asked: “Did you use metric or English units?” I responded that it didn’t matter if these explorers used feet, giant steps or anything else that was handy because both Common Core and best practice emphasize that at this stage the important thing is to teach that things can be measured. My colleague really didn’t agree, but our conversation was rich and perceptive. In the months to come NSTA won’t just be developing professional development for early childhood educators but for all levels about these topics.
Another area where we need much more work is in the evaluation of trade books for young children and the way this evaluation can drive the market. NSTA has worked with the Children’s Book Council for 44 years to develop selection criteria and use them to identify the best literature at every level. But the choices for early childhood remain limited. In all those years there have only been a handful of books on physical science for preschool use. The books that appear on the media’s “best seller” lists often don’t meet these criteria. This year we join with the International Reading Association and Science Books & Films to offer a “Celebration of Literacy” in Richmond, Virginia October 18. Hopefully, with our new partnerships things will change.
It’s exciting to be part of these new endeavors. Although much of my career was spent at the secondary level, I returned to school after two decades to gain accreditation for early childhood–an eye-opening experience. (I often told my secondary colleagues that I must have been teaching “developmental 9th grade” all along!) I recommend that everyone who cares about scientific literacy take the time to “begin at the beginning” and take the time to see the world through the eyes of young children. Ask “why”…and then “why not.”
(We’ve started a special forum on the topic of Early Childhood Science Education in the Learning Center. Come join us there to extend the conversation.)

At a professional development workshop several years ago, I heard a teacher say “I do lots of activities. My students are so busy, they don’t have time to think!” Her statement has haunted me to this day. I wondered what students learned by following someone else’s busy, fast-paced agenda of activities. It sounded exhausting, for both the teacher and the students.
Another time, I visited a classroom in a school that had 90-minute class periods. The teacher presented a series of activities, changing topics about every 15 minutes–lecture, worksheet, small group discussion, writing, hands-on activities, pop quizzes—but there was no segue between activities and no common theme or unifying concept. These students were also “busy,” but I wondered what they were actually learning from this series of disconnected events.
Fast forward to this week, when I read the article You Really Can ‘Work Smarter, Not Harder’   describing a study on the value of reflection. (Note: the primary source working paper Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance from the Harvard Business School is available as a PDF file. According to the abstract of the study:

Research on learning has primarily focused on the role of doing (experience) in fostering progress over time. In this paper, we propose that one of the critical components of learning is reflection, or the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience. Drawing on dual-process theory, we focus on the reflective dimension of the learning process and propose that learning can be augmented by deliberately focusing on thinking about what one has been doing. We test the resulting dual-process learning model experimentally, using a mixed-method design that combines two laboratory experiments with a field experiment conducted in a large business process outsourcing company in India. We find a performance differential when comparing learning-by-doing alone to learning-by-doing coupled with reflection. Further, we hypothesize and find that the effect of reflection on learning is mediated by greater perceived self-efficacy. Together, our results shed light on the role of reflection as a powerful mechanism behind learning.

As with any study, there are problems generalizing the results to other populations, subject areas, and learning tasks. But it seems that doing hands-on activities or investigations is only part of the learning process; giving students time to process and think about what they are learning pays off.
Reflection doesn’t necessarily mean students staring into space (although that’s what I do when I’m thinking). Reflection involves articulating or summarizing what was learned, making personal connections to previous learning, and formulating questions for future learning. Science teachers often use notebooking, sketching, exit activities, or dictating into a smartphone or app for these reflections. For those teachers who already have students use reflective processes, it’s nice to have validations from more formal studies.
I suspect that most of our students need some examples and modeling of reflective thinking, along with a rationale as to why it is important to learning. This could be an interesting action research project for the classroom!

Authors and designers of books by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Press cover the content science teachers need, so it’s no wonder that the outsides of the books are as impressive as the insides. We are pleased to announce that four NSTA book covers have received honors from the 2014 Washington Book Publishers Design and Effectiveness Awards. Congratulations to the following authors and designers!
Citizen Science: 15 Lessons That Bring Biology to Life, 6-12
Edited by Nancy Trautmann, Jennifer Fee, Terry M. Tomasek, and NancyLee R. Bergey
Cover designed by Joe Butera

What Are They Thinking? Promoting Elementary Learning Through Formative Assessment
By Page Keeley
Cover designed by Rashad Muhammad
Using Physics Gadgets and Gizmos, Grades 9-12: Phenomenon-Based Learning
By Matthew Bobrowsky, Mikko Korhonen, and Jukka Kohtamäki
Cover designed by Joe Butera
Science for the Next Generation: Preparing for the New Standards
Edited by William Banko, Marshall L. Grant, Michael E. Jabot, Alan J. McCormack, and Thomas O’Brien
Cover designed by Joe Butera
More About NSTA Press

 

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has endorsed the National Science Teachers Association’s (NSTA) new position statement on Early Childhood Science Education. Thank you to all the individuals who brought these two professional organizations together to promote excellence in teaching science in early childhood! To get a deeper understanding of how the position statement can benefit your teaching, listen to the Lab Out Loud! podcast interview with early childhood educator and researcher Karen Worth, and read Cindy Hoisington’s column in the online Young Children, “On Our Minds: Promoting Teaching About Science in the Early Years.”

The column begins with a peek into the thoughts of a preschool teacher and goes on to describe the development of the NSTA position statement. Hoisington writes, “The statement also incorporates an appreciation for the unique developmental characteristics and needs of young children. The statement emphasizes that children need frequent and varied opportunities to engage in exploration and discovery and that they develop an understanding of concepts through experiential learning that occurs over long periods of time and in home, classroom, and community settings. At the same time, the statement invites teachers to reflect on how they might extend the science activities they currently do to include more opportunities for exploration and discovery.”
Join the NAEYC’S Early Childhood Science Interest Forum (ECSIF), communicate with others on the ECSIF Facebook page and read more on the ECSIF blog.
To participate (or lurk) in another early childhood science education online community, register for the NSTA Learning Center and read/post/reply to the posts on the Early Childhood public forum. Helpful comments share resources and questions. For a supportive early childhood science education community, join NSTA and sign up for the early childhood email listserv at http://www.nsta.org/membership/listserver.aspx
Since I’m urging you to share your practice with other early childhood teachers, it’s only fair that I do the same. In the past month I’ve worked with teachers and children to examine and make observations of the common dandelion plants; make observations of leaf shapes; helped children plant seeds and watched pharmacists explain how drinking a liquid with pills will help the pills dissolve (USA Festival of Science & Engineering); and worked with second-graders as they designed, built and tested moving objects on ramp structures. Very satisfying work!

Exploring ice is an activity that children find interesting all year round. I remember the thin sheets of ice that would form in winter at what was usually the surface of a puddle in the gravel driveway in my childhood. The ice would cover the top, but when we stepped on it, there was no water under it! Since there wasn’t any water left in the puddle, how did that sheet of ice form, suspended above the non-existent water? Old and young experience that sense of wonder while observing natural phenomena. Journey through Dartmoor in the United Kingdom with blogger and artist Em Parkinson who also marveled at ice formations in depressions in the peat, and along the river.
Young children experience that sense of wonder when handling a block of ice that has an object embedded in it. How did that object get into the ice? They may be very familiar with the frozen water as ice cubes, icy sidewalks or icicles, but don’t really know the conditions in which water freezes to ice. Experiences observing changes in water as the temperature changes build children’s understanding of the properties of water and the reversible changes of freezing and melting. The Next Generation Science Standards puts this understanding in the Grade 2 performance expectation, 2-PS1 Matter and Its Interactions.
In the April 2013 issue of Science and Children, I wrote about observing my own teaching while having children handle ice shapes with small objects frozen into them. The three and four-year-old children shared their ideas about how the objects got into the ice. The explanations were simple, “It fell in,” and, “First they put the ice in, then the object, then more ice!” Only one child confidently related how liquid water becomes solid into ice in a freezer. The children’s responses informed my teaching. We needed more experience with observing water, and ice, as they got warmer or colder, as their properties changed. Luckily we were doing this in January and February when below freezing outdoor temperatures provided a full immersion experience with cold! Indoors the children made their own ice shapes with an object inside by putting plastic buttons into a cup of water and freezing them. Unexpectedly, some plastic buttons floated and some sank in the water.
There are very practical reasons for understanding that water becomes ice when the temperature is cold enough. New drivers coming home at night after a freezing rain laid ice on the roads, bicyclists who deal with morning ice on otherwise perfect-cycling-weather days, and those of us who put beers in the freezer to speed up their chilling process, need to be aware of the phenomena. For children it is more about eating the delightfully cold popsicle now rather than later when it is a disappointing lukewarm sweet drink, or putting the ice cube tray back in the freezer after getting some for your drink.
Now that the weather is warmer, children are exploring water in its liquid form: “washing” a fence, spraying water on chalk drawings to mix the colors, emptying the rain gauge, and watering the garden. Indoors, bathtime is an excellent time to begin exploring science concepts with young children. Read Sarah Erdman’s post in the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s online For Families, in which she shows us how to appreciate the small moments and make the most of every possible time to investigate the properties of that lovely material, water.