Pre-K

Shining Light on Preschool Science Investigations: Exploring Shadows and Strengthening Visual Spatial Skills

Young children are naturally interested in light and shadows, thus providing a meaningful context to introduce preschool science investigations. As children explore how shadows are made and change, they also have opportunities to develop math skills, specifically visual spatial awareness. In this article, we describe a set of light and shadows activities. Through these playful hands-on and digital app investigations, children explore how shadows are made and change.

Author/Presenter

Danae Kamdar

Tiffany Leones

Regan Vidiksis

Ximena Dominguez

Year
2024
Short Description

Young children are naturally interested in light and shadows, thus providing a meaningful context to introduce preschool science investigations. As children explore how shadows are made and change, they also have opportunities to develop math skills, specifically visual spatial awareness. In this article, we describe a set of light and shadows activities.

Young Mathematicians Movement Games

EDC's Young Mathematicians kits provide teachers and parents with games that are fun, spark conversations about math and provide rich learning opportunities. The games are designed to promote persistence, problem-solving and puzzling skills, and support social-emotional learning. These turnkey kits contain everything needed to start playing right away - either in the classroom or at home - and are available in English or Spanish.

Author/Presenter

The YM Team

Year
2023
Short Description

EDC's Young Mathematicians kits provide teachers and parents with games that are fun, spark conversations about math and provide rich learning opportunities.

It All Adds Up: Connecting Home and School Through Family Math

Considered a core component of children’s foundational cognitive development, early mathematics experiences can support children’s long-term academic success. Teachers and families alike share the common goal of wanting children to succeed developmentally, socially, and academically. Given the importance of early mathematics to academic success in all subjects, children need and deserve to build a robust knowledge of early math concepts in their earliest years.

Author/Presenter

Jessica Mercer Young

Kristen E. Reed

Year
2023
Short Description

Given the importance of early mathematics to academic success in all subjects, children need and deserve to build a robust knowledge of early math concepts in their earliest years. In this chapter, we consider the approach of the Young Mathematicians (YM) project at EDC, which for the past ten years, has partnered with families, teachers, and early childhood programs in richly diverse communities with large populations of students of color, linguistically minoritized students, and students living in poverty, to support math learning across home and school environments.

Language Systematizes Attention: How Relational Language Enhances Relational Representation by Guiding Attention

Language can affect cognition, but through what mechanism? Substantial past research has focused on how labeling can elicit categorical representation during online processing. We focus here on a particularly powerful type of language—relational language—and show that relational language can enhance relational representation in children through an embodied attention mechanism.

Author/Presenter

Lei Yuan

Miriam Novack

David Uttal

Steven Franconeri

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2024
Short Description

Language can affect cognition, but through what mechanism? Substantial past research has focused on how labeling can elicit categorical representation during online processing. We focus here on a particularly powerful type of language—relational language—and show that relational language can enhance relational representation in children through an embodied attention mechanism.

Promoting Spatial Orientation: A Math Activity for Teachers and Families

Perry, L., Kuehnert, E., & Ketterlin-Geller, L. R. (2022). Promoting spatial orientation: A math activity for teachers and families. Teaching Young Children, 15(3), 8-12.

Author/Presenter

Lindsey Perry

Eloise Aniag Kuehnert

Leanne Ketterlin Geller

Year
2022
Short Description

This article offers spatial reasoning math activities for school and home learning.

Classroom-Based STEM Assessment: Contemporary Issues and Perspectives

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Author/Presenter

Christopher J. Harris, Eric Wiebe, Shuchi Grover, James W. Pellegrino, Eric Banilower, Arthur Baroody, Erin Furtak, Ryan “Seth” Jones, Leanne R. Ketterlin-Geller, Okhee Lee, Xiaoming Zhai

Year
2023
Short Description

This report takes stock of what we currently know as well as what we need to know to make classroom assessment maximally beneficial for the teaching and learning of STEM subject matter in K–12 classrooms.

Opportunities for Research within the Data Science Education Community

This webinar provided early career data science education researchers with information on the state of the field; tools, curricula, and other resources for researchers; and insight into funding opportunities and proposal development. Participants explore topics, research interests, and problems of practice in more depth in breakout rooms with session leaders.

Author/Presenter

Katherine Miller, Chad Dorsey, The Concord Consortium; Kirsten Daehler, Leti Perez, WestEd; Kayla DesPortes, New York University; Nicholas Horton, Amherst College; Seth Jones, Middle Tennessee State University; Josephine Louie, Education Development Center; Josh Rosenberg, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; David Weintrop, University of Maryland

Lead Organization(s)
Year
2023
Short Description

This webinar provided early career data science education researchers with information on the state of the field; tools, curricula, and other resources for researchers; and insight into funding opportunities and proposal development. Participants explore topics, research interests, and problems of practice in more depth in breakout rooms with session leaders.

Improving Prekindergarten and Elementary Science Teaching: A Synthesis of Recent DRK-12 Program Investment in This Field

This review synthesized insights from 25 NSF DRK-12 projects that studied prekindergarten (PreK) and elementary science teaching. This review covered 25 of the 27 projects funded between 2011 and 2015. We synthesized the empirical findings from interventions in four common areas: preservice PreK and elementary preparation programs, in-service teacher professional development, instructional materials for PreK and elementary teachers, and strategies for diverse learners. Many of these projects studied interventions in more than one of the common areas.

Author/Presenter

Danielle Ferguson

Isabella Pinerua

Dean Gerdeman

Year
2022
Short Description

This review synthesized insights from 25 NSF DRK-12 projects that studied prekindergarten (PreK) and elementary science teaching. This review covered 25 of the 27 projects funded between 2011 and 2015. We synthesized the empirical findings from interventions in four common areas: preservice PreK and elementary preparation programs, in-service teacher professional development, instructional materials for PreK and elementary teachers, and strategies for diverse learners. Many of these projects studied interventions in more than one of the common areas. Researchers found that DRK-12 projects showed promise in increasing preservice and in-service teachers’ self-efficacy and pedagogical content knowledge and students’ science content knowledge.

The Development and Assessment of Counting-based Cardinal Number Concepts

The give-n task is widely used in developmental psychology to indicate young children’s knowledge or use of the cardinality principle (CP): the last number word used in the counting process indicates the total number of items in a collection. Fuson (1988) distinguished between the CP, which she called the count-cardinal concept, and the cardinal-count concept, which she argued is a more advanced cardinality concept that underlies the counting-out process required by the give-n task with larger numbers.

Author/Presenter

Arthur J. Baroody

Menglung Lai

Year
2022
Short Description

The give-n task is widely used in developmental psychology to indicate young children’s knowledge or use of the cardinality principle (CP): the last number word used in the counting process indicates the total number of items in a collection. Fuson (1988) distinguished between the CP, which she called the count-cardinal concept, and the cardinal-count concept, which she argued is a more advanced cardinality concept that underlies the counting-out process required by the give-n task with larger numbers. One aim of the present research was to evaluate Fuson’s disputed hypothesis that these two cardinality concepts are distinct and that the count-cardinal concept serves as a developmental prerequisite for constructing the cardinal-count concept. Consistent with Fuson’s hypothesis, the present study with twenty-four 3- and 4-year-olds revealed that success on a battery of tests assessing understanding of the count-cardinal concept was significantly and substantially better than that on the give-n task, which she presumed assessed the cardinal-count concept.

Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Mathematics and Science A Cross-Disciplinary Synthesis of Recent DRK-12 Projects

This review synthesized insights from 27 NSF-funded projects, totaling $62 million, that studied pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in STEM education from prekindergarten (PreK) to Grade 12, split roughly equally across mathematics and science education. The projects primarily applied correlational/observational and longitudinal methods, often targeted teaching in the middle school grades, and used a wide variety of approaches to measure teachers’ PCK.

Author/Presenter

David Miller

Isabella Pinerua

Jonathan Margolin

Dean Gerdeman

Year
2022
Short Description

This review synthesized insights from 27 NSF-funded projects, totaling $62 million, that studied pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in STEM education from prekindergarten (PreK) to Grade 12, split roughly equally across mathematics and science education. The projects primarily applied correlational/observational and longitudinal methods, often targeted teaching in the middle school grades, and used a wide variety of approaches to measure teachers’ PCK. The projects advanced substantive knowledge about PCK across four major lines of research, especially regarding the measurement and development of PCK.