Elementary School

P2E Curriculum related publications

Bagiati, A., Evangelou, D. (2013) Engineering curriculum in the preschool classroom: The teacher’s experience.European Early Childhood Education Research Journal. In Press

The study presented here focuses on the development of an early education Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) curriculum with emphasis on engineering. This paper presents the teacher’s experience as she undertook the task of familiarizing herself with the new content and using the curriculum in a university based lab-school classroom in the USA. More specifically, the paper describes and analyses the collaboration between the teacher and the curriculum developer. It also presents facilitators and barriers during the implementation, as identified by the teacher and the researchers, reports on the multiple stakeholders involved, and raises questions for future research. Engineering education in the precollege years is a developing academic discipline that stems from the need to understand and improve the ways engineers are formally educated. The belief of early experiences as determinants of later experiences has long constituted a basis of educational planning. Therefore, identifying the appropriate age and manner in which early childhood education becomes part of engineering education, is very important in the current climate.

Bagiati, A., Evangelou, D. (2011) Starting young: Outcomes of a Developmentally Appropriate PreK Engineering Curriculum, Research in Engineering Education Symposium, Madrid, Spain, October 4-7

Engineering education for the pre-college years is a developing discipline. Todate there are no curricula available for the preschool level. Focus of this study is on thedevelopment of an early engineering curriculum that will complement the traditionalemphasis on developing basic literacy, numeracy, and science along with social,emotional, and motor skills, while retaining high fidelity of the early engineering content addressed. Current work presents a qualitative case study examining the developmental appropriateness of the curriculum and reports on effect on children’s learning. Setting isa university campus-based child care program in the Midwestern U.S. Participants are11 children, their parents and the teacher. Data include researcher’s field-notes; teacher’s notes, weekly journal, and exit interview; records of children’s work; and parents’ questionnaires and letters. Children’s learning is analysed based on thecategories of knowledge, skills, dispositions, and feelings. Findings support thedevelopmental appropriateness of the early engineering curriculum, along with the feasibility and the necessity of the implementation.

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PhD Thesis - Bagiati, A. (2011) Early engineering: A developmentally appropriate curriculum for young children. School of Engineering Education, Purdue University

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