Let's do science! Promoting the development of beneficial beliefs about science in early childhood

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The roots of gender, racial, and ethnic disparities in science achievement take hold in early childhood, with lifelong implications for educational outcomes. Often, these early roots are in the form of problematic beliefs, including beliefs that science is something in which only a select group of people can succeed. These beliefs are particularly discouraging for children from social groups that are underrepresented in science, including girls and children from certain racial and ethnic minority groups. This project will reveal how these problematic beliefs develop and how to promote more beneficial ones—in particular, how to promote beliefs that science is something that people learn to do rather than an identity that one needs to have. Further, this project will test whether targeting these beliefs in early childhood creates positive trajectories of science engagement over children’s transition from prekindergarten into formal schooling. In doing so, this project will develop a new approach to spreading beneficial beliefs about science and promoting science engagement among young children from social groups that are underrepresented in science, while addressing fundamental questions about how beliefs develop and spread across communities. By partnering with teachers to implement this project and using an innovative, webcam-based lab for remote developmental research, this project will maximize the opportunities for this research to lead to rapid changes in educational practices that will broaden participation in science in early childhood. This project is funded by the EHR Core Research program, which emphasizes STEM education research that will generate foundational knowledge in the field.Phase 1 will reveal the mechanisms by which problematic or beneficial beliefs about science arise in early childhood via an experimental field study with 2,000 children and 200 teachers in a large, public prekindergarten program. This field experiment will test a model of conceptual development and belief transmission wherein children’s beliefs are shaped by subtle features of the language they hear about science; in particular, teachers’ use of linguistic cues implying that scientists are a special kind of person, including category labels (e.g., “Let’s be scientists!”) and generic descriptions of what scientists do or are like (e.g., “Scientists discover things about the world”). The field experiment will test the influence of reducing these identity-focused linguistic cues, and instead encourage more action-oriented language (e.g., “Let’s do science! Doing science leads to discovering things about the world”) on the development of children’s science beliefs and behavior. Phase 2 will examine the extent to which children’s developing beliefs about whether success in science requires a special identity have consequences for the development of social stereotypes about science and for children’s science engagement and efficacy over the transition to kindergarten (as social disparities in science interest and social stereotypes about scientists begin to emerge). This phase will entail a two-year longitudinal follow-up study of a subset of 500 children from the field experiment, which will be conducted via an innovative webcam-based lab for remote developmental research, which will allow for longitudinal tracking after children transition schools. Thus, this project will advance research by addressing fundamental questions about the nature of early conceptual and social development, including how language shapes the development of children’s science beliefs and behavior, how children’s beliefs change over time, and how researchers and educators can harness developmental mechanisms to promote positive developmental trajectories of science engagement across diverse populations of children. Creation of a public website to share project materials and findings will enable rapid dissemination to researchers across disciplines, curriculum developers, prekindergarten teachers, and families of young children.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.