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Abstract Comprehensive experiences with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in the pre-school settings can assist young students in learning about computer science and engineering in K-12 classrooms. Such experiences are also an important way to attract more students to STEM careers. Currently however, the number of high-quality STEM education resources and materials available to preschool educators is limited. This is particular the case in areas of high poverty in communities that have been under-resourced longitudinally. This research addresses a gap in preschool teachers' capacity to support young children's STEM content knowledge by determining what sorts of technology is present in children's home, and how such technological experiences impact children's familiarization with and use of technology in preschool classrooms for children ages three-five. The presented study is part of a larger, NSF funded project in which preschoolers, their teachers and their families experience an intervention to improve children's access to technology and experience in pre-engineering and early computer science education via professional development with their early childhood teachers. The referenced "umbrella" study's research questions include: (1) In what ways does the project's infusing of play-based early computer science and pre-engineering into child development programs impact young children's early computer science and pre-engineering knowledge, and their knowledge of and early interest in STEM careers? (2) What is the relationship between the project's teacher professional development model and participating teachers' content knowledge of early computer science and pre-engineering and instructional performance? (3) What impact does the teachers' cyber-safety focused professional development have on the cyber-safe practices of participating preschool teachers and their young students? And (4) What role do young students' early technology experiences play in their comfort with, interest in and understanding of technology use? The full research project employs a teacher professional development program that allows preschool educators and university STEM faculty to co-create materials and engage in teacher professional development together. This is "work in progress" research during its second year in operation. In the first year of the project, the research team engaged in research on the needs of teachers in diverse early childhood education. These results were presented last year (2023) at ASEE. This 2024 ASEE paper submission responds to the fourth research question (above) of the referenced larger early education study regarding children's use of and comfort with technology use. This question was included in the research because the literature suggests that frequency of use of technology and familiarization with technology increases K-12 students' interest in STEM majors in college and careers; so as researchers, we wish to determine the level of interest, experience and comfort with technology young children have in their homes and how that may impact their in-class technology familiarization and use. This is of particular importance for the population engaged with this research because 92.3% of them are considered under-resourced financially by federal poverty standards. For the present paper, we conducted a family survey on the use of technology in children's home who are in the preschools in which the teacher participants for the larger study teach. The family survey collected information about the types of technology the child had in their homes, whether the young children in the families witnessed use of the technology, (a proxy for learning vicariously from about technology), whether they used the technology themselves, and then compared that information to the children's use, familiarization and comfort with using technology in their preschool classroom. Results of this research indicated that the majority of the preschool children had only experiences using a smart phone or television, either vicariously or directly. Nearly 100% of the children had access to television. Of those who had smart phones in their home 64.1 percent had direct experience playing with a smart phone. Only 26% of the children had experiences with computers and these experience were primarily vicariously, watching either a parent, other adult, or an older sibling using a computer. Very few children used a robot at home, a few had access to an e-tablet, and a small number of children had access to musical technology. The connections to use in the classroom were rather profound. Of those who used technology other than a TV, the more frequent and the variability in technology use, the more comfortable the children were with in-class technology use. Full empirical results of the family survey will presented in the full paper that will correspond to this paper abstract.
Gisele Ragusa (Sat,) studied this question.