Early childhood education (ECE) is grounded in a pedagogical understanding that views learning as a transaction (Dewey & Bentley, 1991) between children and the world through their bodies, language, emotions, and social relationships, rather than as a linear transfer of information. From this perspective, National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) moves away from understanding developmental domains as separate categories of achievement, and conceptualises them as dynamic, interrelated dimensions that emerge simultaneously within learning processes (NAEYC, 2021). Therefore, in early childhood (EC), holistic development refers to the interplay of developmental domains within the learning context, rather than to their simple accumulation.

STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) education is deeply rooted in Eurocentric knowledge systems (Kopparla et al., 2022) and defined as an educational approach that integrates science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) disciplines, addressing learning in interdisciplinary contexts (Bybee, 2010). Due to its interdisciplinary nature, STEAM education is associated with contemporary learning theories that view learning as a contextual (Liu & Wu, 2025), process-oriented (Yang, et al., 2025), and problem-based activity (Akcay Malcok & Ceylan, 2022). The integration of STEAM disciplines emphasises learning experiences in which different forms of knowledge are co-constructed (Hachey et al., 2022), rather than acquired within isolated fields.

In ECE context, STEAM education and its increasing visibility is often grounded in theoretical assumptions in the literature with reference to contribute multiple developmental domains, including language (Aktulun et al., 2024), cognitive (Başaran & Bay, 2023), and socio-emotional development (NAEYC, 2021), as well as related competencies such as communication skills (Nikolopoulou, 2023), creativity (Erol et al., 2023), problem-solving (Akcay Malcok & Ceylan, 2022), and critical thinking (Rosyida et al., 2025).

It is methodologically expected and legitimate for individual experimental studies to focus on a specific developmental domain. However, this focus can obscure the extent to which the widespread claim that STEAM can contribute to multiple developmental domains is reflected in research practices across the field. This systematic review takes as its starting point the assumption that STEAM education in EC is theoretically justified with reference to multiple developmental domains and aims to examine how this assumption is concretised in the empirical literature. Specifically, this review aims to examine which developmental domains (e.g., cognitive, language, and socio-emotional) are most frequently investigated in the literature and which domains are comparatively underrepresented. In this respect, the following research questions are posed: (1) What are the general characteristics of the reviewed studies in terms of year of publication, country of origin, and research design, and how have these characteristics evolved over time? and (2) To what extent do experimental STEAM studies in ECE address multiple developmental domains?

Following the established method for a systematic review developed by Booth, Sutton, and Papaioannou (2016), I applied a four-step procedure to review the current research. First, I established inclusion and exclusion criteria. Second, I identified relevant studies using the PRISMA guidelines (Page et al., 2021). In the third step, the identified studies were coded, and in the fourth step, they were evaluated (Booth et al., 2016). The Scopus database was chosen for the initial data search due to its interdisciplinary coverage (Mongeon & Paul-Hus, 2016). While conducting the study search, the terms “early childhood,” “kindergarten,” “pre-school,” “STEM,” and “STEAM” were used in various combinations. The initial search for journal papers yielded a total of 672 results. Subsequently, the studies were further screened based on the following criteria: publication between 2014 and 2024 and indexing in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), resulting in 258 studies. As some studies focused on cells within medical fields, subject areas such as Neuroscience, Biochemistry, and Toxicology were excluded, and I acquired a total of 162 studies. To select experimental studies, the remaining 162 studies were further screened by reading their abstracts. While the review of these abstracts, I maintained the following inclusion criteria: (1) the study must specifically address young children and EC, encompassing ages from birth to eight; (2) the study must discuss a STEAM education curriculum, programme, or experience; and (3) the study must be designed as experimental research. Consequently, a grand total of 27 papers were acquired and retained for the present review. After the final sample was obtained, I also reviewed the full-text and read the procedure sections to enhance my comprehension of the applied STEAM activities and to enhance the validity of the coding process. For determining which developmental domain the studies primarily focused on, the thematic analysing process was performed on the studies (Yin, 2015). Research questions, aims, and/or objectives were systematically identified for each individual study. These were then coded to determine which developmental domain(s) each STEAM study focused on within the ECE context. The NAEYC (2021) guideline was followed to establish rules and profiles for each thematic category. This was done to guide the coding process and ensure that each study could be linked to one or more developmental domains. Inter-coder reliability was established through independent coding by an ECE expert, with agreement calculated using Miles and Huberman’s (1994) formula, yielding a reliability coefficient of 93%.

The results indicate that most of the included studies were published between 2021 and 2023, with a marked increase in 2022 (n=6). From a methodological perspective, the vast majority of the studies reviewed employed quantitative research designs (n=21), whereas qualitative (n=3) and mixed-methods designs (n=3) were comparatively underrepresented in recent years. An examination of developmental domains indicates that the majority of studies focus on the effects of STEAM education on children’s cognitive development (n=16). Social-emotional development is addressed in a more limited number of studies (n=4), while language development was examined in only one study. No studies directly addressing physical development were found. However, two studies showed that STEAM activities can support all developmental areas holistically. In conclusion, the results of this review suggest that experimental STEAM studies in ECE engage with multiple developmental domains only to a limited extent, with research largely concentrated in specific developmental areas and notable gaps in physical and language development. Future studies are recommended to systematically examine the effects of STEAM activities across different developmental domains in EC. The adoption of experimental research designs that simultaneously address multiple developmental domains may strengthen the empirical basis of conceptual assumptions in the literature.

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