Engineering curriculum in the preschool classroom: the teacher's experience

Abstract

The study presented here focuses on the development of an early education Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) curriculum with emphasis on engineering. This article presents the teacher's experience as she undertook the task of familiarising herself with the new content and using the curriculum in a university based lab-school classroom in the US. More specifically, the article describes and analyses the collaboration between the teacher and the curriculum developer. It also presents facilitators and barriers during the implementation, as identified by the teacher and the researchers, reports on the multiple stakeholders involved, and raises questions for future research. Engineering education in the precollege years is a developing academic discipline that stems from the need to understand and improve the ways engineers are formally educated. The belief of early experiences as determinants of later experiences has long constituted a basis of educational planning. Therefore, identifying the appropriate age and manner in which early childhood education becomes part of engineering education, is very important in the current climate.