A Literature Review on STEM Education Applications for Young Learners

This report delves into the significance of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education within the global education landscape, emphasizing its crucial role in early childhood development. It highlights the importance of a personalized learning approach, focusing on the core subjects to equip students with essential skills for academic and future career success. The report conducts a literature review, incorporating online articles and research journals, to assess the impact and effectiveness of STEM learning methods and frameworks for young children. It analyzes various applications designed to integrate STEM concepts, supported by the Early Years Learning Framework. The report explores the benefits of visual stimulations in learning and highlights the importance of innovative teaching methods to keep children engaged with complex subjects. It also examines the use of STEM education apps, categorizing and analyzing the applications such as construction apps, experimentation apps and skills based apps like ELSA and robot factory, which are being used to teach STEM concepts to children at an early age.

Assessment 1: Report

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Big data and its characteristics....................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................2

INTRODUCTION
STEM education is one of the most talked about and discussed avenues in the global
education scenario and refers to the study methodology and framework which prioritizes 4 core
subjects which are Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. This style of
personalized education from a young age in which children are taught basic level skills which
help build their focus in these key areas is very important for making sure that students are very
well equipped to handle their academic rigours and future career pathways. This report will
highlight the impact and usefulness of STEM learning methods and framework which are
subjected towards children at an early age through a literature review comprised of online
articles and research journals and will also focus on a range of different applications which are
used to inculcate aspects of STEM based learning in people at a young age. The applications and
concepts of STEM learning will also be analysed in this report with the help of Early Years
Learning Framework (Mystakidis,Christopoulos and Pellas 2021).
MAIN BODY
Literature review
According to Akturk and Demircan, 2017, the importance of STEM education is quite important
for students as the early development of these skills in them is very important to obtain good
results later on in their life (Akturk and Demircan, 2017). By the use of STEM education, one
can handle their academic progress in a much more holistic manner as the subjects which are the
main focus of this learning methodology are very vital in order to progress one’s career pathway
in the future. According to the many statistics and official study which has gone into analysing
the impact of STEM study methodology on the minds of younger people such as the one
conducted by Akturk and Demircan, the overall result has been quite complex as even though
exposure to such learning methods displayed positive results from children but without the use of
innovative methods of delivery, the STEM methods can often fall flat.
One of the major things which people have to keep in mind while engaging pre-schoolers in
any sort of learning in relation to complex subjects such as mathematics and aspects of modern
technology is that their understanding of such areas is quite limited by default. In order to ensure
that the children respond positively to the STEM teaching methods being taught to them, it is
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very important to make sure that the teaching method is as innovative as possible. This is due to
the fact that children get bored easily when they are made to engage with tough concepts of
complex areas such as science and mathematics if the process is not made attentive and attractive
enough. According to the various studies conducted by Ozturk and Erden, 2011, children
respond much more positively to the integration of visual stimulations in their learning and
knowledge absorption process and without proper use of visual stimulants, STEM based learning
in toddlers is a very difficult undertaking as many times, such efforts fall flat and only forced or
rote learning takes place which is a very harmful precedent to set among pre-schoolers.
According to Bequette and Bequette, STEM teaching methodology is quite complex and
requires extreme dedicated and a very well balanced attitude towards teaching students,
especially of pre-school years which is why many teachers drop the idea of teaching STEM
concepts to toddlers. This is very sentimental for the growth of children and getting exposed to
subjects such as mathematics, science and engineering later on in life troubles their ability to
establish a broad understanding of the basics.
These common problems in the process of STEM learning in toddlers poses a very
credible threat to the future of study in classrooms in Australia and the world at large as the
demand of the job markets is quite complex due to the skills being required being quite complex
and multi-layered. The core understanding of mathematics and science if developed from a
young age needs to be taught with visual stimuli which has been demonstrated with the literature
review discussed above. This solution has been addressed by both the Australian subcontinent
and the global environment which the advent of technology driven applications which are taking
the help of internet platform and devices such as laptops, tablets and mobiles to teach children in
their early ages (Ibáñez and Delgado-Kloos2018).
STEM education apps available for children
According to Zydney and Warner, 2016, there are many applications which are being
used to teach tough subjects like Science to students from all ages and it is quite beneficial to
teach subjects belonging to STEM category (Zydney and Warner, 2016). The use of mobile
applications in STEM learning is quite diligent as the way in which visual elements are play up
to administer various types of learning to students is very helpful. Over the years, there have
been many applications which have come forward specifically to teach concept of STEM
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learning towards children by teaching them basics of science and mathematics in a holistic
manner. The various apps which have been seeing increased usage to teach STEM concepts to
children at an early age belong to 3 distinct categories which are listed herein with examples
(Mahendran and PM 2022).
Construction apps
One of the most influential STEM apps which is built around the experimentation ability
of toddlers in order to engage them in creative pursuits to make them better at learning is the
robot factory application developed by Tiny bop is which is very popular among both parents
and children. This application is one of the best uses of digitally enhanced STEM learning as it
contains more than 100 different body part combinations of robots which are all compatible and
customizable with one another. Pre-schoolers and young students can combine various robotic
parts to create their own robot which helps get their creative juices flowing. Then on top of that,
the app provides a custom built simulated environment where children can take their designed
robot on an adventure to test the durability and performance of their robot. This helps instil a
sense of achievement in children and helps speed their STEM learning process (PapadakiS
2022).
Experimentation apps
One of the best applications which has been used to promote STEM learning through
active construction is inventioneers. This application is quite vital for students at a young age to
get exposure towards some of the easiest concepts of science which helps in their advanced
STEM study curriculum in upcoming years (Pattison and Ramos Montañez 2022). Inventioneers
application allows students to make their own inventions through construction and helps build
strong concepts about scientific processes such as magnetism and real time physics which forms
the backbone of STEM learning.
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Skills based apps
Early learning stem Australia or ELSA is one of the most innovative applications in the country
which has solidified itself with being one of the best platforms for providing a variety of early
stage STEM learning towards students in a visually appealing and entertaining manner to obtain
high levels of engagement. The flagship STEM learning program of Australia is designed to help
instil a variety of useful subject oriented skills which are highly transferable in their academic
life and advanced career progression down the road. The program is now run by Splat maths and
focuses on making children engage with various apps and activities to boost their mathematical
quotient. Applications such as location and arrangement help build cognitive abilities and
patterns and relationships help establish relation building and logical reasoning skills in children
at a young age which are very helpful in STEM subject learning later on in their life (Sumsion
Harrison and Bradley 2018).
CONCLUSION
The above report went into detail with various complex issues such as, teaching of Toddlers
as well as the importance of their learning so that their basic elementary education can be
provided in an effective way. The report included the discussion on STEM, learning which is
used to teach basic concepts of science maths and technology to increase their knowledge and
providing them awareness regarding the basic topics of learning. The above report also detailed
the three different types of learn9ng, which can help the s toddlers about critical thinking and
basic educational concepts. ELSA, robot factory is some of the apps which are currently being
used to promote critical thinking and efficiency among the pre-schoolers so that their skills can
be improved and enhanced. It has been concluded from this report that in order to teach students
about STEM learning the use of visuals stimulants and technology like applications are very
important.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Akturk, A.A. and Demircan, H.O., 2017. A review of studies on STEM and STEAM education
in early childhood. Ahi Evran Üniversitesi Kırşehir Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi (KEFAD),
18(2), pp.757-776.
Bequette, J. W., & Bequette, M. B. (2012). A place for art and design education in the STEM
conversation. Art Education, 65(2), 40-47
Ibáñez, M.B. and Delgado-Kloos, C., 2018. Augmented reality for STEM learning: A systematic
review. Computers & Education, 123, pp.109-123.
Mahendran, N. and PM, D.R.V., 2022. A deep learning framework with an embedded-based
feature selection approach for the early detection of the Alzheimer's disease. Computers
in Biology and Medicine, 141, p.105056.
Mystakidis, S., Christopoulos, A. and Pellas, N., 2021. A systematic mapping review of
augmented reality applications to support STEM learning in higher education.
Education and Information Technologies, pp.1-45.
Öztürk Yılmaztekin, E., & Erden, F. T. (2016). Investigating early childhood teachers’ views on
science teaching practices: the integration of science with visual art in early childhood settings.
Early Child Development and Care, 1-13. doi: 10.1080/03004430.2016.1160899
Papadakis, S., 2022. Apps to Promote Computational Thinking and Coding Skills to Young Age
Children: A Pedagogical Challenge for the 21st Century Learners. Educational Process:
International Journal (EDUPIJ), 11(1), pp.7-13.
Pattison, S. and Ramos Montañez, S., 2022. Diverse STEM Interest Development Pathways in
Early Childhood. In Play and STEM Education in the Early Years (pp. 439-457).
Springer, Cham.
Sumsion, J., Harrison, L.J. and Bradley, B., 2018. Building a knowledge base about the impact
of early learning frameworks for infants and toddlers. Early Child Development and
Care, 188(6), pp.651-664.
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Zydney, J.M. and Warner, Z., 2016. Mobile apps for science learning: Review of research.
Computers & Education, 94, pp.1-17.
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