Science Education in Early Years in the Era of Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Science education is a major field of practice, with science (and individual science disciplines) being taught and learned at various levels, both formally and through more informal approaches (such as the learning that takes place when people visit science museums) all around the world. Science education as a research field is therefore concerned with developing knowledge about the learning and teaching of science. This knowledge helps us to better understand the phenomena. There is evidence that children can engage in meaningful science explorations (McClure et al., 2017), while research is providing increasing evidence of young children’s capabilities in science (Siraj-Blatchford and Siraj-Blatchford, 2002). Studies reveal the impact this early engagement has on the development of children’s knowledge and attitudes towards scientific inquiry. Children develop a positive attitude, a sense of awe, and a tendency to explore, which appear to be related to higher performances in science and a preference for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers later in life (McClure et al., 2017).

Researchers are vigorously debating on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the early years (Bers, 2017; Marsh et al., 2016). Even though the introduction of technology in the context of early childhood education has been a point of debate and controversy, there is now a general agreement that it is important for young children to have some access which may aid them to familiarize themselves with a range of software (Marsh et al., 2017). Considering the fact that it appears vital for science education to concern everybody, it comes as no surprise that in recent decades, one of the main objectives of science education has evolved to concern early years science education with the use of digital technologies such as tablets, robots, digital games, mobile devices, etc. There is evidence that well-designed and developmentally appropriate devices, software, and other digital resources and approaches such as digital storytelling can have a positive impact on young children’s learning, provided that they are strategically integrated into meaningful learning activities

Our objective is to present a greater comprehension of the influence of digital technologies on young children’s learning procedure and its potential for early childhood science education.

We plan to use this research topic to increase our understanding of how different ICT resources contribute to science teaching and learning. We welcome contributions from researchers in science education and related fields whose work closely examines the impact of use of digital resources on young children.

This Special Issue will comprise a selection of papers presenting original and innovative contributions to the advancement of research in areas related to early years science education, STEM, robotics, computational thinking, coding and mobile learning in early years.

Papers selected for this Special Issue will be subject to a rigorous peer-review process with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.

References

Bers, M.U. (2017). Coding as a Playground: Programming and Computational Thinking in the Early Childhood Classroom, London: Routledge.

McClure, E.R., Guernsey, L., Clements, D.H., Bales, S.N., Nichols, J., Kendall-Taylor, N., & Levine, M.H. (2017). Stem Starts Early: Grounding Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education in Early Childhood, The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, New York.

Marsh, J., Kontovourki, S., Tafa, E., & Salomaa, S. (2017). Developing Digital Literacy in Early Years Settings: Professional Development Needs for Practitioners, A White Paper for COST Action IS1410.

Siraj-Blatchford, J., & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2002). Discriminating between schemes and schema inyoung children’s emergent learning of science and technology. International Journal of Early Years Education, 10(3), 205-214.

Ass. Prof. Michail Kalogiannakis
Ass. Prof. Maria Ampartzaki
Dr. Stamatios Papadakis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• early childhood education
• early years science education
• ICT in early years
• STEM, robotics, computational thinking, coding and mobile learning in early years
• multiliteracies
• action research
• qualitative research in early years
• educational design research