Instructional Perseverance in Early-Childhood Classrooms: Supporting Children’s Development of STEM Reasoning in a Social Justice Context

Jennifer Ward,Katie Monahan,Joseph Dinapoli

doi:10.3390/educsci12030159

Jennifer Ward, Katie Monahan + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12030159

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Abstract

In early childhood education (ECE) classrooms, teachers navigate practices about how to allow space for students to make sense of new STEM-based ideas. We posit that such pedagogical moves require ample in-the-moment perseverance by the instructor. In this paper, we seek to explore the nature of such instructional perseverance in ECE classrooms and how it manifests when ECE educators are supporting young children to develop their STEM reasoning, with a primary focus on the mathematics discipline in a social justice context. Working with a dataset consisting of four ECE classroom episodes, we employed an analytical framework that captured evidence of instructional perseverance. We found that the instructional perseverance of the ECE teacher was integral to the development of STEM reasoning of her young students. We present an illustrative case that details the instructional perseverance of the ECE teacher and the related STEM reasoning of her students in the context of exploring income variance by race. We argue that teacher education development must address how ECE teachers can plan for and navigate in-the-moment instructional obstacles in order to support young students’ STEM reasoning development, which positions students for productive STEM-based outcomes.

Highlights

Effective education about Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)content in early childhood education (ECE) classrooms requires a focus on both students’and teacher’s perseverance
We focus on the ways in which ECE teachers support young children to demonstrate STEM reasoning through the communication of knowledge
By the nature of the ECE-3PP, these findings describe the instructional perseverance and coinciding STEM reasoning by the ECE teacher and students, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Effective education about Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)content in early childhood education (ECE) classrooms requires a focus on both students’and teacher’s perseverance. The importance of perseverance in problem-solving for learning with understanding is a widespread theoretical position in education [1,2] In this context, perseverance has been defined as initiating and sustaining, and re-initiating and re-sustaining, in-the-moment productive struggle in the face of obstacles, setbacks, or discouragements [1]. The processes of struggle to approach, reach, and make continued progress despite a perceived impasse put forth cognitive demands upon the learner that are conducive for the development of conceptual ideas [3,4] This theoretical framework positions students as successful learners if and when they engage in a productive struggle to make meaning, or as they grapple with ideas that are within reach, but not yet well-formed. From the teacher’s perspective, the notion of perseverance in problem-solving takes on a different meaning In this context, the problem-solving that teachers do refers to their in-the-moment pedagogy to better support students’ engagement with STEM-based ideas. We define the construct of instructional perseverance as initiating and sustaining, and re-initiating and re-sustaining, opportunities for students’ engagement with new ideas in the face of content-based and pedagogical obstacles, setbacks, or discouragements

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