Design and Development: Research Exploring Activity Characteristics and Heuristics for Early Childhood Engineering (REACH-ECE)

儿童早期的学习经历有可能给年轻人留下持久的印象，并最终影响他们的兴趣、学校轨迹和职业生涯。因此，人们越来越努力地了解是什么让这些经历对年轻人来说更有成效或更少，特别是在面临与劳动力发展相关的持续挑战的科学、技术、工程和数学领域。更好地了解早期工程活动期间和之后发生的事情--特别是有助于3至5岁儿童获得富有成效和引人入胜的体验的因素--可以为新活动的设计提供信息，并有可能在很小的时候就促进对工程的更大兴趣和学习。这项研究试图通过探索幼儿工程活动的不同元素对早期学习者可能或多或少有效的方式以及原因来增加这一领域的新知识。此外，这项研究还考察了家庭层面上与工程相关的参与度和兴趣，承认父母和家庭在幼儿全面发展中发挥的重要作用。最后，这项研究特别侧重于低收入和讲西班牙语的家庭，从而与那些历来较少获得早期科学和工程学习机会并在这些领域长期任职人数不足的社区接触。为了最大限度地发挥这项研究的影响，这项研究的结果将广泛分享给家长、教育工作者和来自多个领域的研究人员，如工程教育、儿童发展和非正式/校外教育。这项研究有可能对工程教育产生革命性的影响，开发教育产品和概念框架，促进该领域关于如何有效地让年轻学习者及其父母/照顾者参与有意义和富有成效的工程学习经历的知识。这项研究试图在幼儿工程学的前沿领域开辟新的天地，特别是通过a)阐明和完善一个新的综合概念框架，该框架将学习和发展理论与工程设计的理论结构编织在一起，以及b)在为早期学习者，特别是来自低收入和西班牙语家庭的学习者创建、实施、评估和修改以家庭为基础的工程活动的组成部分时，应用和完善这一综合框架。与许多其他儿童早期工程项目不同，这个项目关注的是家庭背景，这是这个年龄段学习和兴趣发展的主要驱动力。因此，这项研究提供了一个机会，通过帮助幼儿在进入幼儿园之前建立工程技能和兴趣，同时也使父母能够在关键发展时期支持他们的孩子-S工程教育。此外，通过加强亲子互动和支持一系列儿童早期发展目标，该项目还将有助于减少种族、民族和社会经济群体之间持续存在的幼儿园准备差距。这项研究最终支持增加可能进入工程工作队伍的个人的多样性的努力。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Early learning experiences for children have the potential to make a lasting impression on a young person, and ultimately influence their interests, school trajectories, and professional careers. As such, there has been an increasing effort to understand what can make these experiences more or less productive for young people, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields that face ongoing challenges related to workforce development. A better understanding of what happens during and after early engineering activities - and in particular, what contributes to a productive and engaging experience for children between the ages of 3 and 5 - can inform the design of new activities and potentially catalyze greater interest and learning about engineering at a young age. This study seeks to add new knowledge in this area by exploring how and why different elements of engineering activities for young children might be more or less effective for early learners. In addition, the study also examines engagement and interest related to engineering at the family level, acknowledging the essential roles that parents and families play in the overall development of young children. Finally, this study includes a specific focus on low-income and Spanish-speaking families, thereby engaging with communities that historically have less access to early science and engineering learning opportunities and remain persistently underrepresented in these fields. In order to maximize the impact of this research, findings from this study will be shared broadly with parents, educators, and researchers from multiple fields such as engineering education, child development, and informal/out-of-school time education. This study has the potential to have a transformative impact on engineering education by developing both educational products and conceptual frameworks that advance the field's knowledge of how to effectively engage young learners and their parents/caregivers in meaningful and productive engineering learning experiences. This study seeks to break new ground at the frontiers of early childhood engineering, specifically through a) articulating and refining a new integrated conceptual framework that weaves together theories of learning and development with theoretical constructs from engineering design and b) applying and refining this integrated framework when creating, implementing, assessing, and revising components of family-based engineering activities for early learners, particularly those from low-income and Spanish-speaking families. Unlike many other early childhood engineering programs, this project focuses on the family context, which is the primary driver of learning and interest development at this age. The study therefore provides an opportunity to advance the field by both helping young children build engineering skills and interests before starting kindergarten while also empowering parents to support their children?s engineering education at a critical developmental period. Additionally, by enhancing parent-child interactions and supporting a range of early childhood development goals, this project will also contribute to efforts to decrease the persistent kindergarten readiness gap across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. The research ultimately supports efforts to increase the diversity of individuals who will potentially enter the engineering workforce.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.