Science in the Early Childhood Years Carolyn Pope Edwards, University of Nebraska Carolyn Pope Edwards is Professor of Psychology and Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, specializing in cross-cultural studies of social development, moral and socio-cognitive development, and early childhood education. She was also Professor of Family Studies at the University of Kentucky, and Professor of Education and Director of the Human Development Laboratory School at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Edwards has written and lectured widely on such topics as creativity and children’s play in education, literacy, collaborative learning, moral development, and cross-cultural issues. Her work has taken her to Norway, where she was an Invited Senior Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study, Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters; Italy, where she was Visiting Professor of Psychology at the National Research Council; and Kenya, where she was Research Associate in the Child Development Research Unit at the University of Nairobi. "Teachers who want to foster scientific learning in young children… must come close to children, enter their world, join with them, and foster their kind of science." — Carolyn Edwards Presentation Highlights Young children’s play and exploration has much in common with the scientific processes of investigation, experimentation, and research. Scientists have been described as people who "play with ideas in order to change the complex into the simple." Children’s play with objects may be construed as simple, but a closer look reveals that it is the way they make sense and order out of what must initially seem complicated and mysterious to them. Infants and toddlers are both natural scientists (exploring properties of the physical universe) and social scientists (analyzing how people think, what they want, and how people are the same or different). This presentation helps to define approaches to scientific exploration by young children. Children as Natural Scientists Infants and toddlers explore basic properties of the physical universe such as: Time Space Number Size Categories Physical events Cause and effect During the first 4 years of life, children are building their first approximations of what will slowly become mature concepts of the world. At first, these concepts are the intuitive, initial ideas that serve as the foundation for making the world meaningful and predictable. Children as Social Scientists Young children analyze: How people think; What people want; and How people are the same and how they are different. The social science concepts of most interest to toddlers and preschool children include: Age groups and roles; Gender categories and identity; Ethnic/racial differences; Family; Friendship; and Early moral concepts of authority and justice as fairness. Scientific Skills Young children construct their own orientation to the exploration, investigation, and research work of a scientist. These processes or elements include: Basic Science Process Skills The following basic skills lay the foundation for further conceptual development during the later preschool and school years: Observing Classifying Communicating Inferring Measuring Predicting Higher Order Process Skills Several of the basic skills are used concurrently, such as the following: Hypothesizing Identifying and controlling variables Experimenting Interpreting data Making plans and models Scientific Attitudes Young children appear to be born with many of the scientific attitudes that are required for research, including: Curiosity Surprise Imagination Inventiveness Flexibility Persistence Goal seeking Cooperation Listening Pride in accomplishment Science Tools Science tools allow children to be able to measure, count, predict, and control elements of their environment. Appropriate scientific activities and resources for young children can include: Tools for manipulating (hands) Observing (eyes, ears, hand magnifiers) Sorting (containers) Dividing (scissors, spoons, cups) Creating effects (inclines, boxes, funnels) Comparing and measuring (scales, rulers) Recording (paper, markers, cameras, tape recorders) Scientific Education Educators should: Listen, look for, and encourage children’s earliest scientific thinking; Foster problem-solving attitudes; Encourage actions investigating properties, categories, transformations, and relationships; and Document and review. Children’s understanding of the world is rapidly changing and is surprisingly different from adults’. A teacher can enter it only through careful observation and listening. Although many parallels exist between the attitudes and behaviors of adult scientists at work and of very young children at play, one key difference is that young children explore less systematically - not at an analytic distance. Teachers can learn about children and at the same time promote children’s scientific development by working with them side by side on: Complex problems that engage children in a group; and Projects based on children’s own stated questions and motivations. Video of Presentation Presentation Highlights No Handout for This Presentation List of Mathematics and Science presenters/presentations Information on how to view videos and view/download handouts

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