- Objective or purposes

The main purpose of this experience was to promote the scientific reasoning in kindergarteners (5 years-old children) at high risk of social exclusion. In order to achieve this objective, we designed and implemented classroom activities following the inquiry-based learning methodology. The inquiry methodology allows the natural curiosity of the children to foster the processes of asking questions and searching their own answers by observation, experimentations and thinking. All that processes support the cognitive development of the children (Smolleck et al., 2006; Alake-Tuentera et al., 2012).

-Theoretical framework

Research on cognitive development points out that preschool children have some potent cognitive competencies and a much greater potential to learn than previously thought. Preschool-age children can acquire rich domain-specific knowledge through experience and practice. These include early Arithmetic abilities and skills, implicit understanding of cause and effect sequences, pre-literacy ‘writing,’ and some science knowledge (Gelman and Brenneman, 2004; Eshach and Fried, 2005).

Early childhood settings should provide richer and more challenging environments for learning. Additionally, young children need guidance and structure to turn their natural curiosity and activity into something more scientific (Worth, 2010). It has been observed that participation in inquiry-oriented and literacy-rich science learning activities facilitates kindergarteners’ learning and interest in science. They ask meaningful questions, predictions about outcomes, observe and record evidence, revise and represent their knowledge, and communicate their findings (Samarapungavan, Mantzicopoulos, & Patrick, 2008, Samarapungavan et al., 2009). Promoting scientific literacy in early childhood classrooms is an action that establishes the basis of future science understanding but also improves the achievement of key skills and attitudes towards learning (Worth, 2010).

This growing understanding of the value of science in early education comes at a time when the number and diversity of children in childcare settings is increasing (Worth, 2010). This is of a huge relevance in the case of children who belong to groups at risk of social exclusion. The access to science education is not widespread and uniform within the whole society. Data from European Union show big disparities in participation in science education across regions, cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds and gender, which are blocking full involvement in society of all citizens and talents (Ballas et al., 2012). Students begin to form ideas about “who does science” from very young age and these ideas are strongly influenced by their families and experiences of school science (Dewitt and Archer, 2015). Thus, the implementation of inquiry-based learning activities at very early ages is a good way to support the cognitive development and the scientific reasoning of children, especially relevant in the case of high risk of social exclusion communities. This project puts in contact the scientific reasoning and practice to those social collectives that normally are far away from science. In this case, early childhood children who belongs to families at high risk of social exclusion. The project is currently in the experimentation phase (January 2019). The inquiry activities are already designed and tested and we are implementing it at the schools. These schools were chosen due to its location in contexts of low socio-economic status and high risk of social exclusion.

Three different schools of Tarragona region (Spain) were selected to participate in the project “Inquiry in early childhood education: activities in the classroom to promote scientific reasoning, including collectives at risk of social exclusion”, funded by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), from the Spanish government. The homogeneous standards of these schools are: students with a high risk of social exclusion (migrants, cultural minorities and low income families) and schools transformed in Learning Communities. Heterogeneous standards for each school are: School A: Located in the city suburbs, transformed in an ethnic ghetto. This school has more than 70% of students belonging to Gypsy ethnicity and more than 20% of students are immigrants. School B: Located in the center of a city. The 20% of the students are immigrants and with socioeconomic diversity. School C: Located in a town. It is a school recently created whose students present high diversity in terms of ethnic origins, religion and socioeconomic status. The participants of this study are 129 children of K-level (5 years-old) from 3 different schools. This experience consisted in six scientific activities devoted to scientific reasoning during their regular school time. Three of these sessions were related to some physical properties of the matter and designed following full inquiry process. The other 3 sessions taught about human paleoecology, with demonstrations and original material from Paleolithic and Neolithic. These activities are implemented by researchers in those fields. To measure the impact of this intervention, we conducted the nine questions about the processes of scientific inquiry of SLA-V2 survey (Samarapungavan et al., 2009), a survey designed and validated for 5 years-old children. We have just data from the pre-tests, conducted before the activities and, once the program will end, we are going to perform the post-test. After taking part on the intervention, a group of children will participate in semi-structured interviews, which will focused on deepening on their personal expectations regarding scientific vocations, among other relevant topics. The researchers will register the interviews via audio and then analyzed the results using a communicative approach. The communicative data analysis enables to collect those aspects of reality that are considered to hamper the egalitarian access to science (exclusory dimension) and, on the other hand, those that promote equal opportunities (transformative dimension) (Gómez, Puigvert & Flecha, 2011).

This experience will provide high-quality activities, in regular classroom schedule, for kindergarteners (5 years-old). Thus, these sessions contributed to promote scientific reasoning skills and a first contact to science for children belonging to vulnerable communities. As we mentioned, this project is currently in the experimentation phase. Several activities have been already conducted but the whole intervention is not finished yet. Therefore, we only have the pre-test performed prior intervention and some observations made during the implementation of the activities. The activities were designed considering not only the purpose of the project, promoting scientific reasoning through inquiry activities, but also the age and needs of kindergarteners. Classroom layout and dynamics of the activity plan were carefully designed. Among the most relevant items we took into account in the design were need of movement, allow time to think and talk and give them voice and choice. As first evidence from our observations, we found that children in our project have not a systematic way of describing observations. Observation is a crucial step in inquiry and these children need a specific instruction on it, such as the observation activity proposed by Gelman et al. (2010). They need a structure to perform the observations and also to increase their vocabulary. A part from that, we observed a good performance of the activities and a high level of implication and accomplishment. Another interesting observation was the fact that children trend to correct their hypothesis once they have the results. The idea that a wrong hypothesis is not a mistake was recurrently expressed and talked with them. Finally, most of the groups realize that you can have a wrong hypothesis, and most of time that is what we have, and it is ok.

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