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A Systematic Literature Review on STEM Research in Early Childhood

2022; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-981-19-0568-1_7

2196-4963

Sokratis Tselegkaridis, Theodosios Sapounidis,

Child Development and Digital Technology

Nowadays, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) tools are used in many schools promoting formal and informal learning. STEM framework covers the educational needs of various age-groups starting from pre-school up to university. With this framework, students develop knowledge and skills while dealing with real-world problems. In the previous years, several reviews have been published aimed at STEM studies. Nevertheless, these reviews do not investigate a specific age group. Thus, the present book chapter is a systematic literature review on STEM research in early childhood, focusing on STEM studies for students under 8 years old. For this purpose, the chapter includes articles, which were emerged from search keys in six scientific databases. The review presents some major characteristics of the studies such as: (a) the number of participants in the intervention (sample size), (b) the intervention objectives, (c) the size of groups, (d) the equipment type, (e) the materials used, and (f) the type of research design. According to the findings, among others, STEM education in early childhood seems to successfully meet the teaching objectives, the group size is usually between 2 and 4 students, the long-term studies are absent and the quantitative methods are limited.