Paper Session 13.2

The University of Sydney

Saturday 26 November 2022. 9:00am - 10:00am

Sue Dale Tunnicliffe

STEM in play in the earliest years

Contact Author: Sue Dale Tunnicliffe. (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

IOE, University College London, London WC1H 0AL, United Kingdom

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Children are instinctive investigators. In play, interactions involve STEM actions –predominantly forces, pushes, pulls and twists. Through playing, they learn incrementally, constructed from the first observations and interpretations of natural and constructed objects, often called toys and interactions with available technologies. Interaction in some countries with digital technologies is also play and contributes to creativity and problem solving.

Play in the young, is an apprenticeship for adulthood, observable in different societies. Many play types have been identified, such as re-enactment play. STEM actions occur in most play, yet it has remained unidentified. Play is children’s work (Roth et al. 2013) is unlike the recreational role of play by adults. The earliest experiences are STEM-E (Experiences) and develop into STEM when skills and actions have been mastered.

Dawn Wiseman^a, Limin Jao^b, Taylor Rubin^b, Kaylei Grobeckker^a, Steven Campeau^a, Marie Lou Boisvert^a

Meeting curricular requirements: a mapping of student-directed STEM

Contact author: Dawn Wiseman (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

^aSchool of Education, Bishop’s University, Ktinékétolékouac (Sherbrooke, QC) J1M 3Z7, Canada

^bDepartment of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University, Tiohti:àke (Montreal, QC) H3A 0G4, Canada

BACKGROUND

We describe longitudinal study results of Grade 7 student-directed STEM inquiry (SDSI) at a small, independent school in Québec. The school is commitment to research-based practice; teachers know SDSI improves student conceptual understandings, retention, skills (Bunterm et al., 2019). They struggle with research-identified barriers to implementing SDSI: lack of time, resources, professional learning, etc. (Fitzgerald et al., 2019). This presentation focuses specifically on teacher concerns regarding connections to mandated curricular requirements (Fitzgerald et al., 2019) via the question: How does SDSI align with the Québec Education Program (QEP)? We present analyses/mappings of curricular outcomes from Years 1&2, and alignment with the QEP. The presentation thus addresses a key concern in STEM education.

TIME ZONES: The conference program is spread over four half-days (8am to 1pm). All the times in the program will be in Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT), which is the time zone of Sydney, NSW, in the summer. AEDT is 11 hours ahead of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) ie. GMT+11. A time converter can be used to calculate your local time for the duration of the conference. We recommend you consult a time converter to confirm the exact time of presentations you wish to view.

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