…in preschool years.
STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. This acronym is used so often in education that it hardly needs to be introduced. Then there are variants of the acronym like STEAM, STREAM, and so on. However, there have been some questions regarding what STEM looks like for early years or at the foundational stage.
What does STEM mean for preschoolers?
Do preschoolers have the knowledge base to be involved in STEM learning?
How is it different from the Mathematics and Science/EVS that preschoolers do as part of their curriculum?
How can preschoolers be exposed to engineering at this age?
Does technology really help preschoolers?
These are all fair questions and things that need to be addressed. In today’s edition, we won’t try to answer these questions, but suffice to say that STEM in preschool may not need to be something very different from what is in the Environmental Science or Mathematics curriculum. What changes, though, is the way to approach these topics. For example, if students are learning about ‘rough and smooth’ as part of their vocabulary building, it can include an activity of making toy cars run on different types of materials and see what happens. The students understand how to test the distance the cars travelled on different surfaces (Science), they learn about different types of materials (Engineering), and they are measuring distance (Mathematics).
In this edition, we write about the challenges that preschool teachers face while taking this approach.
The T and E in STEM are not my strengths
This is the foundational challenge. When one uses this acronym, the teachers are anxious. Teachers feel that they are not equipped with the knowledge or skill set to expose students to engineering concepts or technology. But as you saw with the example above, at the preschool stage engineering can also be just about understanding that different materials feel different and they have different impacts on the distance a car travels. Engineering can be building a bridge using blocks – the students understand that you need the same number of blocks to make the bridge stand, and they realise that blocks of some shapes are better than others for building a bridge. The school management needs to ensure that they create an environment for the teachers where they can explore new ways of teaching curricular topics so that the STEM perspective is introduced.
I am afraid of being wrong
As stated earlier, teachers are underconfident of their own knowledge and skill to introduce the STEM way of thinking. There is a real fear of being wrong. What if I tell students something that is not accurate? What if the student asks me something that I am not able to answer? We think that it is okay to not know, as long as you can help students find out the answer to their questions. In fact, not giving away the answer is a good way of making students think. We understand that at the preschool level a student’s knowledge base is small, and building this up is important. So teachers can be selective in giving out the answers to the students. The management needs to create a supportive atmosphere for the teachers by helping them with resources that teachers can read or watch to build their confidence in the subject matter.
I am uncomfortable doing things with my hands
Even if a preschool teacher does amazingly creative things like cutting out different shapes to help students learn, they are not confident of extending the hands-on work to things like building a slope and running a toy car to see how far it goes. The only way a teacher can build this confidence is by trying it out. Teachers are confident of their current way of teaching because they are used to it, it is familiar, almost a habit. It is important to make this hands-on approach also a familiar thing for teachers. The management needs to hold teachers accountable and check in on the approach they are taking in the classroom.
I lose control in open-ended classes
One of the most challenging things that teachers find in trying to introduce the STEM approach is that the classes will tend to be more open-ended. Teachers feel like the students’ learning is not in their hands any more. This is not true. Students’ learning is definitely in their hands and the learning outcomes or goals do not change. The path taken by the student may change a little. Any ‘open-ended’ class will need to end with the student learning what they were meant to learn. And teachers do not need to move directly from traditional classrooms to completely open-ended classrooms. There can be intermediate steps in which most of the time, the classroom is traditional, and a small portion of the time it is more open for students to explore.
I cannot communicate with parents on why this is a good approach
In a situation where parents are concerned about why their child has only learned numbers up to 50, while Mr. Sharma’s child, who goes to a different school has learned numbers up to 100, the pressure on teachers to do more is immense. The school management stepping in, and helping parents understand that in-depth learning leads to longer retention times, and so on becomes important.
STEM in preschool needs to be rethought as how to approach the topics within the curriculum from a more scientific or engineering perspective. There is no need to add things to the curriculum, but just change the approach. And the only way to start is by starting, and trying it out in your school. Our teaching strategies at TEPS.school can help you out with some resources for this.
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Edition: 4.08
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