STEAM Learning
The Anita Zucker Center and our collaborators are generating and sharing knowledge about factors that support young children’s STEAM learning using various methods and measures. Our current research, led by Dr. Elyssa A. Geer, focuses on (a) exploring factors that relate to STEAM learning, (b) identifying factors that underly these relations, and (c) developing and testing strategies to enhance young children’s STEAM learning. We are currently investigating and sharing information about how different cognitive factors, social factors, and early learner characteristics relate to STEAM and other learning outcomes. The overarching goal is to identify factors that impact STEAM learning and how these factors can be promoted to ensure equitable outcomes for all young children.
“We know that learning in areas such as science and math are important, because those subjects are the foundation on which technology continues to evolve… but I never realized how much room there is to improve learning in these areas through something as simple and accessible as the blocks in our classrooms.”
Our work helps practitioners and caregivers understand how children’s early experiences in their everyday routines and activities affect their STEAM learning and how to use effective practices to support children’s learning. When practitioners and caregivers know what influences young children’s STEAM learning, they can provide enhanced learning opportunities as they interact with children throughout the day. Work in this area furthers the Center’s mission of promoting excellence in early childhood at the local, state, and national levels.
Center Priorities
We identify factors, such as children’s spatial skills, that support STEAM learning and promote effective and equitable practices to improve young children’s STEAM outcomes.
Engaging Partners
Our partnerships with local, state, national, and international partners provide opportunities for advancing knowledge and sharing information about effective and equitable STEAM practices. We are engaged in activities that provide students, practitioners, and caregivers opportunities to learn about and use STEAM-related practices. Examples include opportunities for early childhood practitioners to learn how to engage young children in spatial activities, such as block play, in more intentional ways to enhance their early mathematics skills.
Dr. Elyssa A. Geer is teaching early childhood studies students about the importance of STEAM learning and the effective and equitable practices that support positive learning outcomes for young children.
Dr. Elyssa A. Geer has identified relations between children’s spatial skills and math skills that suggest early spatial skills impact later math skills and early math skills impact later spatial skills. This work demonstrates an important cyclical relation wherein spatial and math skills co-develop in early childhood. Dr. Geer has also conducted and been a key collaborator on several meta-analyses (i.e., a study of studies) focused on examining the relations between (1) math anxiety and math skills, (2) spatial and math skills, (3) spatial anxiety and spatial skills, and (4) math interest and math skills. She has collaborated on a block play intervention study that showed that encouraging children to block play two days a week for 15 minutes at a time led to improved scores on various measures (i.e., math, executive function, spatial skills).