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It is the first book in the underrepresented field of early engineering education. The book explores why engineering experiences are important in young children's overall development and how engineering is a core component of early STEM learning. The book is relevant to engineering education as well as to early mathematics and science learning, and early childhood learning in general.

This chapter explores engineering as it applies to students in the early grades. First, we consider engineering as a STEM foundation.We then address ways in which we can provide supportive learning environments for early engineering learning. As part of such environments, we examine how we can build on intrinsically interesting problems. In exploring ways of harnessing young learners’ natural ways of thinking, we consider the role of play in early engineering learning and how we can capitalize on this play. The integration of engineering within the early curriculum is then reviewed, followed by a summary of perspectives on ways in which engineering is developmentally appropriate for, and beneficial to, young learners.

As the chapters in this book illustrate, engineering is a natural feature of early childhood learning and development. Young children have innate tendencies to participate in engineering activities, displaying sophisticated design and thinking processes in doing so. Teachers need support, however, in facilitating this early development. The need for more developmentally and culturally appropriate curriculum resources remains a pressing concern when trying to implement engineering in a range of early childhood classrooms. Of the numerous areas requiring attention, this chapter touches on just a few in both reflecting on the current scene and suggesting recommendations for advancing the field. These include (a) the need to incorporate both engineering design processes and habits of mind in promoting early engineering learning, (b) the creation of developmentally appropriate experiences that provide pedagogical affordances, and (c) the integration of engineering in STEM education, with extensions to STEAM(science, technology, engineering, the arts, mathematics).

Early Engineering Learning comprises two main sections presenting a mix of research studies, theoretical advancements, and classroom empirical examples. As such, this book provides a rich resource for researchers, policy makers, curriculum developers, and classroom teachers alike. Engineering learning is a significant yet underrepresented field in early education, despite being one of the most practical and real-world domains that all children can engage in. As evident in the chapters of this book, young children are eminently capable of solving engineering-based problems; indeed, they do this on a daily basis. Engineering education integrates readily and meaningfully not only within the other STEM domains, but also with literature and the arts more broadly. Various approaches to early engineering learning are showcased throughout this book, with engineering design processes and habits of mind featured prominently. Not only are these design and thinking processes foundational to early engineering but can also enhance learning across several other disciplines.

This chapter reports on eight-year-old children’s responses to data and chance investigations designed to foster their statistical literacy. Explored through the lens of modelling with data, statistical literacy involves a number of processes common to both statistics and probability, with culmination in models from which conclusions and inferences can be drawn. Specifically, consideration is given to how the students identified variation, made informal inferences, created representations, and interpreted their models that displayed the outcomes from their investigations.

This chapter synthesizes diverse research investigating the potential of inducting elementary grade children into the statistical practice of modeling variability. In doing so, we take a genetic perspective of the development of knowledge, viewing the growth of statistical concepts, such as distribution or statistic, and learning to participate in modeling practices as inherently co-constituted. In professions such as statistics, models are invented and contested within a larger system of communal goals, representations, materials, norms, and settings. But these disciplinary aspects of modeling can only be approximated in schooling and some of them may be so distant from children’s experiences that they are poor candidates for instruction. Hence, in examining the research, we identify seeds of modeling that appear to be essential to the conduct of modeling, accessible to young students, and potentially growing throughout schooling, if systematically cultivated. We convey our goals in supporting children’s development in ways that are pedagogically fruitful and tractable. To balance complexity and tractability, we focus on a framework we refer to as “data modeling.” This framework suggests how approximations to professional practices of modeling could be coordinated to support children’s developing appreciation of variability and uncertainty.

This article explores 6th- grade students’ modelling with data in generating models for selecting an Australian swimming team for the (then) forthcoming 2016 Olympics, using data on swimmers’ times at various previous events. We propose a modelling framework comprising four components: working in shared problem spaces between mathematics and statistics; interpreting and reinterpreting problem contexts and questions; interpreting, organising and operating on data in model construction; and drawing informal inferences. In studying students’ model generation, consideration is given to how they interpreted, organised, and operated on the problem data in constructing and documenting their models, and how they engaged in informal inferential reasoning. Students’ responses included applying mathematical and statistical operations and reasoning to selected variables, identifying how variation and trends in swimmers’ performances inform model construction, recognising limitations in using only one performance variable, and acknowledging inform model construction, recognising limitations in using only one performance variable, and acknowledging uncertainty in model creation and model application due to chance variation.

As more research is carried out in relation to the implementation of school curricula including statistics, the question arises as to how far students can progress before they reach the need for formal statistics. Can they understand the concepts involved if they do not have formal techniques such as means, standard deviations, confidence intervals, and t-tests? Near the end of a 3-year longitudinal project introducing beginning inference, Grade 6 students participated in an activity that gave them the opportunity to answer a question based on comparing two groups, the type of question that would be introduced in a beginning tertiary level statistics course after the introduction of the normal distribution, t-distribution, and one-sample inference procedures (Moore & McCabe, 1989). Working within an informal inference context (Makar & Rubin, 2009), there was interest in what evidence students would use to make a decision and what degree of confidence they would have in that decision. Having previously experienced decision-making about typicality in a single set of data, students were introduced to a second variable, creating two groups for comparison. This paper surveys the three perspectives on statistics education that suggest such a study is feasible and relevant; presents the background of the students in readiness for the activity, including understanding measures of center; reports on the students’ capacities to deal with the demands of the activity; and assesses their recall two weeks following the activity.

Disruption is rapidly becoming the norm in almost all spheres of life including business, industry, politics, culture, and the media. These upheavals stimulate disruptive thinking, where perspectives on commonly accepted and often inefficient) solutions to problems are rejected for more innovative approaches and products. STEM education, in particular STEM integration, provides an ideal vehicle for developing the foundations of disruptive thinking, where learning innovation is fostered. For this presentation, learning innovation entails the processes of generating new knowledge and ideas that can be applied to solving a novel problem. Such learning is proposed as central to dealing effectively with disruption and requires the development of both discipline content knowledge and the adaptation and application of this knowledge to the solution of new problems. In illustrating ways in which learning innovation might be achieved in STEM integration, I draw on examples of modelling with design.

In a 3-year longitudinal intervention study developing an understanding of statistical literacy with a cohort of students from Years 4 to 6, teachers delivered lessons from provided materials, including scripts and prompts. Besides completing seven major investigations, workbooks, and several in-class assessments, the students undertook four surveys, from which their overall progress was determined, as well as individual learning progressions. Findings indicated that despite experiencing the same lessons delivered in similar ways, students had very different learning progressions. The implications of these findings are explored.

This paper reports on a study of 3rd-grade students’ modeling with data, which involves comprehensive investigations that draw upon STEM-based concepts, contexts, and questions, and generate products supported by evidence and open to informal inferential thinking. Within a real-world STEM-based context of licorice manufacturing, students experienced the “creation of variation” as they compared and represented the masses of “licorice sticks” they made by hand (using Play-Doh) and those using a Play-Doh extruder. By generating their own statistical measures, students could observe the features of data distributions including center, range, typical, and middle, at a much younger age than usual. They could draw inferences from the models they created, with awareness of how variation limits the certainty with which predictions can be made. The study supports a potential route for advancing early statistical learning.

This paper addresses the initial components of an activity in which 4th-grade students engaged in meta-questioning as they created and refined survey questions with the aim of comparing life across two Australian cities. We propose the term, meta-questioning, as a core, underrepresented feature of statistical investigations in the primary school. We report on the nature of the students’ initial posed questions and their subsequent refined questions, students’ justifications for their question refinements, their anticipated data collection, and developments in their question posing skills. Results include a hierarchy of question types posed by the students and how their question types changed with subsequent refinements.

This report is based on an activity completed by 89 Grade 6 students carrying out a statistical investigation with a focus on posing an initial question given a context and then refining it for a chosen data set. Having reached a conclusion based on evidence from their data analysis, students were given additional information on the context and asked to reconsider their conclusions and degree of certainty associated with them. Data from student workbooks were used to assess students' capacity to engage in the extensions of a statistical investigation not usually encountered at the school level. Results showed approximately 70% of students were able to carry out the complete investigation and justify a meaningful decision.

This study reports on a classroom activity for Grade 5 students investigating their reaction times. The investigation was part of a 3-year research project introducing students to informal inference and giving them experience carrying out the practice of statistics. For this activity the focus within the practice of statistics was on introducing two different ways of collecting data to answer a statistical question, in this case, “What is the typical reaction time of Grade 5 students?” Workbook entries were used to assess students’ capacities to engage in the investigation. Results indicated that although the students were proficient with the procedures and measures introduced, they were less able to explain and apply the underlying concepts. The activity provides a suggestion and benchmarks for others wishing to follow student development of concepts related to the practice of statistics.

Navigating the current STEM agendas and debates is complex and challenging. Perspectives on the nature of STEM education and how it should be implemented without losing discipline integrity, approaches to incorporating the arts (STEAM), and how equity in access to STEM education can be increased are just a few of the many issues faced by researchers and educators. There are no straightforward answers. Opinions on how STEM education should be advanced vary across school contexts, curricula, and political arenas. This position paper addresses five core issues: (a) perspectives on STEM education; (b) approaches to STEM integration; (c) STEM discipline representation, (d) equity in access to STEM education, and (e) extending STEM to STEAM. A number of pedagogical affordances inherent in integrated STEM activities are examined, with the integration of modeling and engineering design presented as an example of how such learning affordances can be capitalized on.

Free to read on publisher website This article reports on fourth-grade students' approaches to solving an introductory engineering design-based problem, namely, Tumbling Towers, which was implemented at the beginning of a three-year, longitudinal study. Set within a civil engineering context, the problem required student groups to design and then build the tallest tower within given constraints. The stability of their towers was tested by removing one pylon at a time, with the goal being to determine the minimum number needed for the tower to remain stable. Students completed a second design iteration in an effort to maximise the number of pylons that could be removed while still maintaining stability. A framework comprising five sets of engineering design processes was developed as a theoretical base and facilitated data analyses. Findings illustrate how fourth-grade students, for whom such problems were new, engaged in design processes in an iterative manner and applied mathematics and science content knowledge in doing so. Four levels of design were identified in the students' design sketches with the highest level being the most frequent in both initial designs and redesigns, with some decline in the latter. Students' application of content knowledge included an awareness of stability and load distribution, together with spatial reasoning involving pylon positioning, removal, and repositioning. Other findings include ways in which group negotiations and students' addition of meaningful contexts assisted in the designing and redesigning phases, and how students spontaneously used gestures to convey their design and construction ideas.

As part of a 3-year longitudinal study, 136 sixth-grade students completed an engineering-based problem on earthquakes involving integrated STEM learning. Students employed engineering design processes and STEM disciplinary knowledge to plan, sketch, then construct a building designed to withstand earthquake damage, taking into account a number of constraints. On testing, students redesigned to build an improved structure. Using a framework of design processes, we report on the students' capabilities in planning, creating annotated sketches, and transforming these into 3D models. An understanding of core STEM concepts was apparent in their responses, including shape properties, stability, rigidity, balance, strength, and engineering techniques. Group problem solving involved moving iteratively between design phases, frequently revisiting problem scoping, being cognizant of the problem goal, boundaries and constraints, and appreciating design sketches as guiding constructions. Students were also observed to consider a number of problem components simultaneously, indicating their capabilities in handling the complexity of the task.

Internationally there is a need for research that focuses on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education to equip students with the skills needed for a rapidly changing future. One way to do this is through designing engineering activities that reflect real-world problems and contextualise students’ learning of STEM concepts. As such, this study examined the learning that occurred when fifth-grade students completed an optical engineering activity using an iterative engineering design model. Through a qualitative methodology using a case study design, we analysed multiple data sources including students’ design sketches from eight focus groups. Three key findings emerged: first, the collaborative process of the first design sketch enabled students to apply core STEM concepts to model construction; second, during the construction stage students used experimentation for the positioning of lenses, mirrors and tubes resulting in a simpler ‘working’ model; and third, the redesign process enabled students to apply structural changes to their design. The engineering design model was useful for structuring stages of design, construction and redesign; however, we suggest a more flexible approach for advanced applications of STEM concepts in the future.