Thank you for visiting our video! Our Center, the STEM Innovation for Inclusion in Early Education Center (STEMIE, https://stemie.fpg.unc.edu ) is funded by the Office of Special Education Programs, US Department of Education. STEMIE is a partnership between Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Marsico Institute at the University of Denver. Our work is focused on developing the evidence including instructional practices and learning trajectories for science, technology, and engineering, and further refining the well-developed math learning trajectories to ensure all young children (birth to five) especially those with disabilities can engage in early STEM learning opportunities in school and at home. 

We have been working with practitioners, children with and without disabilities, and families in early childhood programs and early intervention home-based services conducting rapid cycles of testing of the learning trajectories. We will love to have a chat with you about the learning trajectories we are developing for early science, technology (computational thinking), and engineering, as well as refining the ones for math.

Thank you for sharing your learning trajectories approach with the great annotated video clips showing Kingston and his mother exploring Force and Motion! The video was captivating because of both the wonderful video clips of Kingston and his mother combined with the narration and text materials illustrating what the video was showing.

My question is related to impact: How are you gathering information on the impact of the intervention? Are you using both self-report or interview materials from the caregivers/parents and the students, or only one or the other group? Are there other forms of data gathering such as coding video excerpts for particular utterances or actions taken by the kids?

Also, I would love to know what kinds of activities you are doing for younger kids than Kingston, such as those 18 months to up to 3 years old (Kingstron's age). Are you focusing on 3 years and up or do you also have programs for younger kids? If so, I would love to learn more.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for sharing this video case study of Kingston and his mom. I am wondering if you can say more about how you and your team are defining "early high-quality STEM learning experiences"? Are there specific kinds of experiences or actions you are looking to see with young children? Are there specific principles that are guiding you and the parents, caregivers, and others stakeholders?  

Hello, STEMIE team! It was great to watch your video and hear more about your work. I've reviewed some of the emerging trajectories in the past and I am eager to learn more about what your work uncovers. It's information that is very much needed in the field, to guide the development of programs and STEM innovations.

One question that came to mind is whether you have explored/investigated trajectories for the science and engineering practices, in addition to the core ideas. This is something our team has been indirectly investigating as part of our R&D work. We have noticed young children are easily able to engage in some practices and need substantial support for others. I'm curious to learn if you have any emerging findings in this area. 

Hi Ximena,

Thanks for viewing our video and asking your question.  We have teased apart what we call "child level processes" from the core domain-specific big ideas and are investigating progressions for those as well.  We felt that the child level processes each have their own set of progressions, and should be considered separate from any one domain since many of these cross domains.  Examples are classify, sort, describe, document, reflect, and others.  We are also developing progressions for 'cross-cutting concepts' that act in all domains and serve as another way in to observing and understanding children's thinking.  These include compare & contrast, patterns, cause & effect, change & stability, systems & their interactions, and structure & function.

We would love to hear about what you are finding!  Thanks again for your interest.

-On behalf of the STEMIE Team

I was impressed by the questioning pattern and timing employed by Kingston’s mother. This does not typically occur naturally, so I am wondering what sort of coaching or “parent professional development” processes you may have used. Could you say a bit about how you work with parent’s to implement the learning trajectories?  Thanks 

Thank you for sharing your work! I was also very impressed by the questioning pattern and timing employed by Kingston's mother, and it was wonderful to see how many great ideas Kingston had about the motion of objects on ramps.

While watching your video, I couldn't help but draw connections to our work. Our video is about developing curricular materials for college-level introductory physics students that aim to leverage and build on the good ideas students already have about physics. Although the student population and content goals are different, the general approach/orientation towards learners' ideas are similar. I'd be curious if you have thought about how the principles of scaffolding and building on ideas that Kingston's mom is using could be applied to other contexts, particularly in supporting learning older students? 

 Hi Lauren! Thank you for viewing our video.  I just watched your video and boy are there connections between our work and yours! 

At the core of what we do at STEMIE is the notion of starting with children's interests and trying to figure out what they are thinking in order to help guide their thinking along learning trajectories to more sophisticated levels of thinking and understanding.  That sounds like what you are doing, figuring out and capitalizing on what college students know and believe (especially if those knowings need to be adjusted!) before guiding them along more sophisticated understandings.

Your work also makes me think about a struggle we are having in developing our learning trajectories.   We want to be sure to avoid building the foundation for common content misconceptions (such as a tennis ball and a bowling ball fall at different rates), yet when thinking about young children birth to 5 as we do, finding that line between too much information and offering enough accurate content is always on our minds.

Thanks again for stopping by!