Schools The science of play: introducing STEM in early childhood settings
Five years ago, Professor Marilyn Fleer and her team set out with a goal to change the way STEM is taught in early childhood settings. Conceptual PlayWorld is a teaching model that uses story to create imaginary problem-solving scenarios. The AEU News first spoke with Fleer in 2019, at the beginning of the $3.2 million study. With the project having wrapped up in March this year, the results are in: it works.
“We piloted the model with 2,700 educators,” says Fleer, Foundation Chair in Early Childhood Education and Development at Monash University. “Our results showed that Conceptual PlayWorlds made a significant difference to teachers’ confidence and competence in intentionally teaching STEM in play-based settings.”
Over the past five years, Fleer and her team delivered targeted professional development to educators across Victoria, effectively “role-playing the new practices and what children would do,” explains Fleer. “It’s really important to have places in professional development where people are imagining how the new practice would look … [and] the different play inspirations, provocations and drama that might emerge.”
The team also worked in partnership with ABC Kids Early Education to introduce PlayWorlds to thousands of Australian educators and families through Play School Story Time. This suite of resources provides STEM-based activities linking to a picture-book reading. In one resource targeted at educators, Tomorrow is a Brand New Day is used to invite children to act as a designer or engineer, build a boat then sail it on an imaginary ocean.
Contrary to previously held academic beliefs, the team found that even older infants and toddlers were capable of engaging in such imaginary play, such as acting out different animals. “If the educators in the PlayWorld acted as if the infants and toddlers could imagine, then over time, the children also started to initiate imaginary play,” says Fleer.
This form of play is essential for fostering imagination, and supports the learning of abstract concepts such as measurement, and thinking about the past and the future. As such, Fleer says imaginary play in the early years can help set up children for success as they transition into school.
PlayWorlds also encourages narratives in which girls can be empowered.
Early years education is also integral to the involvement of girls in STEM. “Through our baseline and intervention data, we were able to see that boys and girls from a very early age are just as interested in STEM,” says Fleer. “But at the age of three, there’s a turning point.”
At this age, Fleer says, children start policing each other about what toys are for girls versus boys. There can also be an unconscious bias among educators, inadvertently privileging the boys’ access to STEM resources. “We had examples of girls holding other girls’ hands and saying, ‘These toys aren’t for you’. We also had examples of boys stepping over girls and sitting in front of them to get to materials, with no policing of that by the educators. In some cases, if a boy did it to another boy, then the teachers would intervene, but when it happened to girls, there wasn’t the same level of intervention.”
The team found that such behaviour was minimised inside the Conceptual PlayWorld due to the changed role of the teacher. “When the teachers are in the imaginary play situation with the children, they can read the play much better, and they can deal with behaviours instantly.”
PlayWorlds also encourages narratives in which girls can be empowered. “The traditional areas like the ‘home corner’ and the ‘block area’ become a library of resources, rather than sites of play where unconscious bias and microaggressions could be happening,” explains Fleer. “The PlayWorld model disrupts potential stereotypes.”
Next, the PlayLab is working with the Department of Education to study the impact of the model on children’s executive functions, such as their ability to plan, focus attention and remember instructions.
“From the literature, we know that if children’s executive functions develop in the year prior to school, there’s more chance they have greater success at school,” says Fleer. “It particularly makes a difference to children from disadvantaged communities, so this could potentially close the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children. We’re really excited by this work.”
