Professional Learning Hub for Early Science (HubES): Leveraging Technology to Develop Supports for Educators to Promote Meaningful Science Learning in Preschool

Science activities provide meaningful learning experiences that align well with early childhood approaches that emphasize the importance of play and collaborative learning, and have been found to not only support children’s later science learning, but also strengthen learning in other key areas such as literacy, mathematics and approaches to learning. To become robust scientific thinkers, however, young children need opportunities to engage in high quality science activities throughout their day. Although science is increasingly recognized as a key dimension of early learning, findings to date indicate that young children, especially those enrolled in public preschool programs serving historically excluded communities, have limited opportunities to engage in high quality science investigations. The lack of professional learning resources available to teachers makes it challenging for them to feasibly and effectively promote science in their classrooms. While recent studies have highlighted components of professional development programs that may be helpful, more work is needed to understand how these components support teachers’ science dispositions and instructional practice and determine whether improvements in teacher outcomes translate into improvements in children’s learning. The adoption of professional development programs often requires substantial investments in time and resources, which can pose challenges for adoption and broad impact. Efforts that consider these challenges and intentionally design professional learning resources that can be widely available to and feasibly adopted by preschool teachers are needed.

To address this need, this four-year design and development project brings together public preschool teachers, families from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, early learning and STEM researchers, and designers of media to co-design a Professional Learning Hub for Early Science. This Hub includes (1) a video library to showcase science practices in action, (2) educative simulations of core ideas to help educators to familiarize themselves with science content, (3) a toolkit to support bidirectional home-school connections and help teachers leverage families funds of knowledge and cultural assets as they integrate science in their classroom, and (4) an interactive map highlighting cross disciplinary connections to articulate how science and other learning domains can be mutually supportive. The project’s research and development activities will occur in three phases across 4 years. The initial phases of the project (Phases 1 and 2) include relationship building activities, an inclusive co-design process that centers educators and families, and design-based research activities to inform refinement of emerging resources. Phase 3 will involve two field studies. The goal of the first field study is to further investigate the usability and feasibility of the professional learning resources with a new sample of teachers and preliminarily examine the promise of the resources in supporting teacher’s attitudes and beliefs and instructional practice. The goal of the second field study is to examine longer term impacts on teachers and their associated effects on child outcomes. Hierarchical linear modeling will be conducted to examine effects on children’s learning and structural equation modeling will be conducted to examine the potential mediating effect of teacher outcomes. By leveraging technology and combining a family- and educator-centric co-design processes, we aim to design early science resources that can have broader and sustained impacts for public preschool educators and young learners.