Promoting Engineering Concepts and Skills in Early Childhood Education

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Added on 2023/04/25

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This discussion post delves into the crucial role of engineering education in early childhood, exploring how to introduce engineering concepts, skills, and processes to young children. It emphasizes the importance of relevant teaching methods, considering constructivist approaches and problem-solving strategies. The post acknowledges the significance of children's unique learning styles, referencing poststructuralism and postmodernism to highlight the active role of children in their own learning. It integrates aspects of the Australian Curriculum, particularly the three strands and relevant outcomes, to provide a comprehensive framework for fostering engineering skills in early learners. The post underscores the significance of hands-on activities, encouraging experimentation and reflection, and promotes the development of critical thinking and real-world problem-solving abilities. The goal is to empower educators to create engaging and effective learning experiences that nurture children's natural curiosity and prepare them for future success in STEM fields. The post uses the provided readings to support the discussion.

Running head: PROMOTING CHILDREN ENGINEERING
Promoting Children Engineering
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1PROMOTING CHILDREN LEARNING
STEM has been emerged as an educational priority in the recent years and it aims at
linking deeper student learning with critical thinking and real life connections. It stands for
Science (S), Technology (T), Engineering (E) and Mathematics (M) (Belland et al., 2017).
However, “E” in STEM is often considered to be an afterthought with the subject of science
and mathematics. According to (), in early engineering, the subject of problem solving,
science, designs and mathematics are important in the development of the engineering
identities among the young students. Engineering education is very crucial in today’s date for
engaging the young students with the concepts of engineering and to help them grow and
develop their skills of problem solving that engineers need to develop throughout their
process of training. The capability of thinking through the complicated problems,
collaborating with others, preserving and improving through failures and communicating
about the human needs are very important skills which can be developed among the youths
by means of engineering education. According to Gough (2015), the young students should
not need to wait for having their under graduation for starting exploring engineering as their
career path.
Furthermore, as claimed by Wang and Degol (2017), the education about engineering
have the potential to yield more immediate benefits in the field of academic career of the
students. The practices of engineering basically involve all the four disciplines of STEM.
There are several educators who agree on the notion that an integrated approach towards the
learning of engineering deepens the study of STEM and at the same time, help in building
some critical skills that are necessary for the 21st century students in order to ensure their
career success. These skills include the skills of computer modelling, problem solving,
collection of data and their analysis, communication of the complicated ideas and several
engineering concepts like optimisation and trade-offs. It is to note that the engineering
concepts are the part of STEM education. By means of building a critical thinking and real

2PROMOTING CHILDREN LEARNING
life problem solving skills, the young students get to learn how to design and innovate some
new products while improving the existing ones. When students are encouraged for
engineering designing processes for building new products and for reversing the process of
engineering, the engineers get adjust to the prevailing product (Mayhew et al., 2016). This
also help them in learning how to use the fluid power for making difficult manoeuvres easier
and for increasing the efficiency while decreasing the negative impacts on the environment.
Furthermore students in this way also get to learn how the design and engineering have direct
influence on the environment sustainability and greening the economy.
According to Cross et al. (2016), most of the middle school learners are natural
engineers. They love exploring, inventing, building and figuring out things by means of
actively engaging in their process of learning. However, when they tolerate working with the
fake scenarios, they get mostly engaged while dealing with the issues which that the real
engineers work on. Teachers in the process of teaching the young students in engineering,
need to set high expectations from their students and must challenge them for succeeding.
They should have faith in them and should show that they do believe in their potential. Most
of the students are seen to be performing to the level of expectations that their parents or
teachers have from them. Hence, they should trust them in order to make some informed
choices regarding their engineering challenges and must come up with some creative and
innovative solutions. With the same, the teachers needs to transfer their control of the process
of learning to the students. They should develop new rules and roles for the students that
would further stress their responsibility. They should foster curiosity among the students by
asking open ended questions along with a good number of possible answers. They should
pose more problems instead of answers and must send the young students on a search for
solutions for them. According to Franz-Odendaal et al. (2016), one of the most effective
teaching method in this regard is that of providing some hands-on and experimental learning.

3PROMOTING CHILDREN LEARNING
They should encourage them learn through reflection. They should also provide some
material to the students that they can explore and manipulate. All these are very important
dispositions for the youngsters of the 21st century that would help them in becoming sustained
and effective learners.

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4PROMOTING CHILDREN LEARNING
References:
Belland, B. R., Walker, A. E., Kim, N. J., & Lefler, M. (2017). Synthesizing results from
empirical research on computer-based scaffolding in STEM education: A meta-
analysis. Review of Educational Research, 87(2), 309-344.
Cross, J., Hamner, E., Zito, L., & Nourbakhsh, I. (2016, October). Engineering and
computational thinking talent in middle school students: a framework for defining and
recognizing student affinities. In 2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
(FIE) (pp. 1-9). IEEE.
Franz-Odendaal, T. A., Blotnicky, K., French, F., & Joy, P. (2016). Experiences and
perceptions of STEM subjects, careers, and engagement in STEM activities among
middle school students in the maritime provinces. Canadian Journal of Science,
Mathematics and Technology Education, 16(2), 153-168.
Gough, A. (2015). STEM policy and science education: Scientistic curriculum and
sociopolitical silences. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 10(2), 445-458.
Mayhew, M. J., Pascarella, E. T., Bowman, N. A., Rockenbach, A. N., Seifert, T. A.,
Terenzini, P. T., & Wolniak, G. C. (2016). How college affects students: 21st century
evidence that higher education works (Vol. 3). John Wiley & Sons.
Wang, M. T., & Degol, J. L. (2017). Gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM): Current knowledge, implications for practice, policy, and
future directions. Educational psychology review, 29(1), 119-140.