By Amber Strong Makaiau
A Hanahau‘oli Junior Kindergarten student’s observations are recorded through illustration and dictation in the “How does my garden grow?” thematic unit.
In 2019, the Hanahau‘oli School Professional Development Center (PDC) was awarded a grant from the Samuel N. & Mary Castle Foundation to grow progressive approaches to early childhood place-based Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) education in the State of Hawaiʻi. Titled, Natural Scientists: Children in Charge, a portion of the funds for this project were dedicated to documenting and filming early childhood STEM education at Hanahau‘oli School. The films produced will be used to support professional teaching and learning at a Spring 2022 PDC workshop series, which will be attended by a cohort of 24 early childhood educators from across the state. Permanently housed on the PDC website, the films are also available as an open access resource illustrating examples of place-based approaches to progressive early childhood STEM education. View the films and accompanying curricular resources in the PDC’s Online Resources for Educators.
Explore the Natural Scientists: Children in Charge STEM resources for progressive educators here.
To create the Natural Scientists films, Hanahau‘oli School teachers studied their curriculum and reflected on their practice as progressive educators. Curriculum at Hanahau‘oli School grows out of the school’s progressive philosophy of education and it is designed collaboratively by teachers at the school. It is developmentally appropriate and emphasizes key concepts that spiral or progress along students’ eight year experience, increasing in complexity from JK to 6th Grade. Science and Social Studies thematic units form the basis of study and help children to address three questions that motivate learning: Who am I? How does the world work? Where and how do I fit in that world? To design, teach, and assess science-based thematic units of study, teachers at Hanahau‘oli use the Inouye and Ross (2009) Scientific Inquiry Framework.
Inouye and Ross, both former Hanahau‘oli School teachers, are passionate about studying what it means to do scientific inquiry with young children. They believe that children are born scientists, and science-based units of study should build off this natural curiosity by immersing students in an environment that allows them to “take charge” of their learning. To structure scientific inquiry, they developed this six part framework:
Creating Community: Essential to all teaching and learning in the unit, students and teachers must work together to create and build a safe community of learners.
Making Observations: Students and teachers explore the natural world and human environment by using all of their senses to make observations and perceive experiences.
Generating Questions: Based on what they observe, students and teachers generate and record explorable questions. At this stage in the scientific inquiry process they might also make thoughtful guesses or hypotheses.
Collecting Data: Students and teachers identify a question that they would like to explore. They design and carry out plans for collecting, organizing, and analyzing data related to that question.
Analyzing Data: Once they have data related to their question, they analyze the data and validate their hypotheses.
Communicating Conclusions: At the culmination of the unit or inquiry, the students and teachers share their conclusions and reflect on the process with others.
At Hanahau’oli, the Inouye and Ross (2009) scientific inquiry framework helps to give structure to units of study. At the same time, the school’s progressive philosophy and pedagogy allows for dynamic, not always linear, and often cyclical explorations to occur.
Elisabeth McClure from the National Institute for Early Education Research (2017) tells us that “whether it is gardening, building forts, stacking blocks, playing at the water table, or lining up by height in the classroom, children demonstrate a clear readiness to engage in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning early in life” (p.1). However, due to a lack of STEM education in early childhood teacher education programs and few opportunities for early childhood educators to engage in professional development around STEM concepts and practices, many early childhood educators do not provide preschool through first grade children with opportunities to engage in meaningful STEM-based learning experiences. In fact, findings and recommendations from the Early STEM Matters (2017) Report explain:
Both parents and teachers appear to be enthusiastic and capable of supporting early STEM learning; however, they require additional knowledge and support to do so effectively.
Teachers in early childhood environments need more robust training and professional development to effectively engage young children in developmentally appropriate STEM learning.
Parents and technology can help connect school, home, and other learning environments like libraries and museums to support early STEM learning.
Research and public policies play a critical role in the presence and quality of STEM learning in young children’s lives, and both benefit from sustained dialogue with one another and with teachers in the classroom.
An empirically-tested, strategic communications effort is needed to convey an accurate understanding of developmental science to the public, leading to support for meaningful policy change around early STEM learning.
STEM may seem like a relatively new buzzword in education, but for progressive educators like John Dewey and Francis Parker, scientific inquiry and exploration is at the heart of their over 100 year-old philosophy and pedagogy. For example, at Dewey’s 1896 experimental school, very young children and teachers began scientific inquiries with observations of the natural world, including the ways in which “plants work” (Mayhew & Edwards, 1965, p.49). Instead of providing children with “ready-made” (p. 6) scientific knowledge, early progressive educators like Dewey espoused that teachers should follow up on students innate curiosity, initiative, discovery, and questions by providing them with resources, materials, and experiences that could advance both their understanding of scientific concepts and the scientific method. Today, this progressive philosophy of education is backed by research from a variety of fields (e.g. psychology, education, and philosophy) and is widely accepted as the developmentally appropriate way in which young children learn best.
Junior Kindergarten students at Hanahau‘oli School engage in hands-on STEM experiences in the Hawaiian Garden.
As the Junior Kindergarten (JK) and Kukunaokalā (K/1) teachers prepared for the Natural Scientists film project at Hanahau’oli School, they met with their teaching teams to review and reflect on the STEM units they wanted to study and highlight. The JK team narrowed in on a science-based unit framed around the question: “How does my garden grow?” The K/1 team focused on an interdisciplinary science/social studies unit guided by the question: “How do shelters help us meet our basic needs?” Individually, the teachers re-read the Inouye and Ross (2009) publication and then came back together to think about the ways in which the design of their units supported students in exploring and learning about the scientific inquiry process and possible areas they could strengthen their curriculum and pedagogy.
For example, the K/1 team worked to strengthen a STEM component of their unit, which focused on integrating mathematical attributes of shapes (e.g. rectangles, squares, triangles) in relation to building a sturdy structure (one of the culminating tasks of their shelters unit). This involved writing a new instructional learning objective, identifying possible resources for teaching about the application of geometric shapes and architectural principles with young students, creating new learning experiences, and bolstering the ways in which they would assess student understanding at the end of the unit. Evidence of their professional learning is seen in their students’ work, and are captured in the Natural Scientists website and video series. It is also evident in the K/1 teacher reflections, written at the end of the film project.
Here is what the K/1 teachers had to say about studying their progressive approach to early childhood STEM education:
The process of working with children in the Ross/Inouye model on the Natural Scientists film grounded me in a few ways. The fact that we were so closely studying and following the Inouye/Ross model brought me back to my early teaching days at Hanahau`oli alongside Lauren Inouye. It helped me reflect on how we naturally took the children’s interests in science related matters and let them ask questions, experiment with their hypothesis, and come to their own conclusions, such a foundational piece of learning in progressive education…Using the same process in relation to our Shelters unit was challenging. It caused me to look at the unit in a different way, and it helped our team integrate geometry and architecture to a level we had not previously done in the past. –K/1 Hanahau’oli School Teacher
I was reminded of the richness of the inquiry process in a progressive education setting - that it is an ever changing landscape of learning that a teacher can plan for, but knows can change at any time when you truly listen to the children and follow their lead. Making observations, generating questions, collecting and analyzing data - these things are happening continuously throughout a unit; sometimes in order, sometimes not, sometimes once, and some multiple times. That's the beauty of putting your students in charge as scientists - they have as many questions as they do answers, sometimes more, and you may need to head down another path before coming back to your original one…Focusing on the scientific framework helped to remind me that if we view our students as scientists they also deserve to know what they are doing, and I found myself using vocabulary such as data, analyze, and hypothesis more than I had in the past. The children enjoyed being able to label what they were doing, and I was more aware and conscientious of how I was guiding the children as well. –K/1 Hanahau’oli School Teacher
I found myself thinking a lot about the purpose, sequence, and timeframe for applying a particular curriculum framework. In planning, to what degree do we let the scientific processes unfold naturally versus more explicitly guiding children to a particular "mode" of thinking? I learned that some of the components of the natural scientists framework emerge more naturally (observing, asking questions) and some need more guidance (hypothesizing, designing experiments, gathering and analyzing data, forming conclusions). –K/1 Hanahau’oli School Teacher
I think the process of filming allowed me to examine more deeply and intentionally into “why” the learning experiences we anticipate doing are timed so thoughtfully. In the course of planning a unit, there are always key experiences that worked well in previous years and we find valuable for the study; it's almost tempting to just copy and paste the unit's outline from two years ago and say we've figured it out. But filming forced me to see the bigger picture and how all the learning experiences build upon each other so meaningfully. –K/1 Hanahau’oli School Teacher
Kindergarten and 1st graders engage with a variety of materials in experimentation and collaboration.
As progressive educators, we believe that active and hands-on learning through scientific experimentation and collaboration with peers in the early years of a child’s education lays a strong foundation for future STEM education and lifelong learning. We also know that teachers need robust professional development experiences, like this film project, which catalyze deep study into what it means to meaningfully engage young children in developmentally appropriate STEM learning. At Hanahau‘oli School, the Inouye and Ross (2009) Scientific Inquiry Framework is a strong foundation for teachers as they design and develop science-based thematic units of study and it serves as a springboard for the "continual reorganization, reconstruction and transformation of experience" (Dewey, 1916, p. 50) that is the progressive approach to education. The framework positions teachers as learners alongside their students who are just as engaged in learning how to teach science as students are interested in pursuing scientific inquiry. Together, natural curiosity and their collective search for answers allows them all to be in charge throughout the process.
Works Cited:
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: Macmillan.
Inouye, L., & Ross. S. (2009). Natural scientists: Children in charge. In R. E. Yager, (Ed.), Inquiry: The key to exemplary science (pp. 15–28). Arlington, VA: NSTA Press.
McClure, E. (2017, February 3). Sowing the seeds for successful STEM learning in early childhood. Rutgers Graduate School of Education. https://nieer.org/2017/02/03/sowing-seeds-successful-stem-learning-early-childhood
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Amber Strong Makaiau is a Specialist at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Director of Curriculum and Research at the Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education, Director of the Hanahau‘oli School Professional Development Center, and Co-Director of the Progressive Philosophy and Pedagogy MEd Interdisciplinary Education, Curriculum Studies program. A former Hawai‘i State Department of Education high school social studies teacher, her work in education is focused around promoting a more just and equitable democracy for today’s children. Dr. Makaiau lives in Honolulu where she enjoys spending time in the ocean with her husband and two children.
