Across the world, people form folkbiological categories to capture their commonsense organization of the natural world. Structured in accordance with universal principles, folkbiological categories are also shaped by experience. Here we provide new evidence from the Wichi--an understudied indigenous community who live in the Chaco rainforest and…

Research Findings: Quality early science education is important for addressing the low science achievement, compared to international peers, of elementary students in the United States. Teachers' beliefs about their skills in a content area, that is, their content self-efficacy is important because it has implications for teaching practice and…

Following a theoretical framework that recognizes the potential of promotive and inhibitive effects on children's development, this study explored child-, family-, classroom-, and school-level factors as predictors of Latinx (N = 4,590) students' early elementary science achievement. Research Findings: Employing a path modeling approach with…

Research Findings: High quality STEM professional learning is necessary for supporting early educators to implement early childhood STEM education in ways that promote young children's development. This is particularly important for educators serving young children of color or from under-resourced backgrounds who have few STEM early learning…

Research Findings: This research aims to examine the affordances for high quality instructional support offered by the Northern Territory Preschool Science Games, alongside differences between classroom quality during the enactment of this teaching resource and the broader early childhood program. Applying a multiple-case study approach, quality…

Research Findings: Educators declare their commitment to high-quality education for all children. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) has been increasingly included as critical topics, even for young children. However, there are exceptions, especially the provision of developmentally appropriate STEM experiences to children…

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educational programs and curricula are in vogue globally and are touted as optimal solutions for developing learners' future values, skills, and knowledge. But are they appropriate for early years learners such as babies (0-2 years), infants (2-3 years), preschoolers (3-5 years), and…

Research Findings: Conversing abstract concepts boost children's language learning. Despite the numerous studies on the linguistic environment of early childhood education settings (ECE), most of this work disregards contextual factors that may influence abstract conversations and omits characteristics of children's verbal participation in these…

Research Findings: The quality of teacher-child interaction is a principal driver of children's development of pre-literacy skills. Yet previous findings regarding the associations between teacher-child interaction quality as measured by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) and children's pre-literacy skills have been inconclusive. This…

Bringing effective practices to scale across large systems requires attending to how information and belief systems come together in decisions to adopt, implement, and sustain those practices. Statewide scaling of the Pyramid Model, a framework for positive behavior intervention and support, across different types of early childhood programs…

The under-representation of women in science disciplines is a persistent problem for workplaces and educational policy. Girls may start to disengage early from science subjects, partly due to cultural stereotypes around science and gender. Early language interventions which introduce science activities in terms of action (or process) versus…