Enhancing Early Childhood Educators' Knowledge of Computer Science and Engineering Concepts to Spark Young Children's Early Interest in STEM Careers

增强幼儿教育工作者对计算机科学和工程概念的了解，激发幼儿对 STEM 职业的早期兴趣

• 批准号: 2148777
• 负责人: Gisele Ragusa
• 金额: $ 104.28万
• 依托单位: University of Southern California
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-04-01 至 2025-03-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2148777&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Enhancing; Early; Childhood; Educators; Knowledge

High-quality experiences with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in the pre-kindergarten years pave the way for learning about computer science and engineering in K-12 classrooms. Early, high-quality STEM learning experiences are also an essential way to attract more students to STEM course work and STEM careers. Currently however, the number of high-quality STEM education resources and materials available to preschool educators is limited. This 3-year project addresses this gap in teachers’ capacity to support young children’s STEM content knowledge by developing (1) a play-based computer science and pre-engineering education program for pre-K children, (2) a web-based, early childhood teacher workforce development program, and (3) accompanying child and early childhood educator assessments. In designing these elements, the project will follow four principles of early learning: (1) technology-mediated learning and pre-engineering is a natural and critical part of children’s early learning; (2) children’s curiosity about the world around them abounds and their engagement with technology is a powerful catalyst for children’s play; (3) with appropriate guidance and equity in access, children’s natural curiosity becomes the foundation for beginning to use technology-mediated inquiry skills and early problem-solving to explore the surrounding world; and (4) early exploration can be a rich context in which children use and develop important early computer science and pre-engineering skills, including programming, working as a team, communication using “pre-engineering” vocabulary, applied mathematics, and design thinking. Project partners include the University of Southern California’s STEM faculty and four Los Angeles community colleges, all of which are Hispanic-Serving Institutions. A set of Los Angeles-area preschools that serve linguistically and culturally diverse communities will serve as research sites. A total of 30 early childhood education teachers with their 600+ children will participate in the implementation research; matched numbers of children will be recruited for the control condition (1200 children total).The project’s research questions include: (1) In what ways does the project’s infusing of play-based early computer science and pre-engineering into child development programs impact young children’s early computer science and pre-engineering knowledge, and their knowledge of and early interest in STEM careers? (2) What is the relationship between the project’s teacher professional development model and participating teachers’ content knowledge of early computer science and pre-engineering and instructional performance? and (3) What impact does the teachers’ cyber-safety focused professional development have on the cyber-safe practices of participating preschool teachers and their young students? The project will use a modular, web-based, teacher professional development program that allows preschool educators and university STEM faculty to co-create materials and engage in teacher professional development together. In years two and three, the project will test the development, feasibility, and fidelity of its approach using a randomized controlled trial (RCT). The RCT will be scaled annually, beginning with two pilot test sites, and continuing with testing across six large sites by the project's final year. Data to be collected include observation of classroom teaching and children’s behaviors, teacher interviews, teacher focus groups, and parent and teacher surveys. During the 2-year RCT, multivariate analyses will be used to examine whether teachers and children in the intervention group have significantly higher post-test scores than their peers in the control group. The team will regress the post-test scores on a set of control variables (race, gender, socioeconomic status), pre/baseline-test scores, and a variable representing intervention versus control to further examine whether teachers and children in the intervention group have significantly higher post-test scores than teachers and children in the control group. Cross group comparisons will be made. At the end of the project, multilevel hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) will be employed comparing teachers and children in Year 3 of the RCT. The project aims to produce a fully tested set of bilingual, bicultural products for national dissemination. Products would include a fully exportable, web-based, modular early childhood educator STEM workforce training and professional development model which focuses on “junior computer science and pre-engineering” through play. This project is funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在幼儿园中的科学，技术和数学（STEM）的高质量经验，在K-12教室中的学习方式。这项三年的课程工作与学龄前教育者的职业有限。伴随着儿童和幼儿教育者的评估好奇心的基础是开始使用技术介导的探究技能和早期解决问题的问题来探索周围的世界，（4）早期探索可能是一个丰富的背景，儿童使用和发展重要的早期计算机科学技能，包括编程，包括一支使用“前工程”词汇的沟通，应用数学和设计思维。参与含义的儿童将被招募到控制状态（总计1200名儿童）。项目的研究问题包括：（1）项目对基于游戏的科学进行了哪些方式。幼儿的科学和工程前的知识，以及他们对STEM职业的兴趣的知识？教师以网络安全为重点的专业发展对学龄前教师的潮流，该项目将我们的一个基于网络的，基于网络的教师专业发展计划。使用随机对照试验（RCT）的开发，ATS的可行性。焦点小组以及在2年的RCT中，多元分析将检查干预组中的教师和儿童在对照组中的同龄人。基线测试分数和变量代表干预干预控制，以进一步检查干预组中的较高的教师教师和对照组的教师。分层线性建模（HLM）将使用RCT的第三年的教师和儿童进行比较。幼儿教育者STEM劳动力培训和专业发展模型的重点是“初级计算机科学和预工程”，该项目由STU Dents and Thocester（ITEST）计划的创新技术经验资助，该计划支持对实践，环境的理解，上下文的理解以及增加学生对科学，工程和数学（STEM）和数学Y（ICT）职业的知识和兴趣的过程。