There is a growing interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) units and projects in the early childhood and elementary years. There are many advantages of embedding math in STEM contexts and activities; it can be excellent for reinforcing math (as well as science, technology, and engineering) concepts and skills. However,…

Dynamic Measurement Modeling (DMM) is a recently-developed measurement framework for gauging developing constructs (e.g., learning capacity) that conventional single-timepoint tests cannot assess. The current project developed a person-specific DMM Trajectory Deviance Index (TDI) that captures the aberrance of an individual's growth from the…

Measurement is a critical component of mathematics education, but research on the learning and teaching of measurement is limited. We previously introduced, refined, and validated a developmental progression -- the cognitive core of a learning trajectory -- for length measurement in the early years. A complete learning trajectory includes…

We define and describe how subitizing activity develops and relates to early quantifiers in mathematics. Subitizing is the direct perceptual apprehension and identification of the numerosity of a small group of items. Although subitizing is too often a neglected quantifier in educational practice, it has been extensively studied as a critical…

Do young children naturally develop the foundations of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)? And if so, should we build on these foundations by using STEM curricula in preschools? In this article, Douglas Clements and Julie Sarama argue that the answer to both these questions is yes. First, the authors show that young children possess…

In reviewing the six articles within this "Instructional Science" special issue, we are reminded of Schoenfeld's ("Educ Res" 45(2):105-111, 2016) review of American Educational Research Association president-authored papers for the centennial celebration of AERA. There, he succinctly unveiled the content focus of AERA research…

Tomorrow's inventors and scientists are today's curious young children--as long as those children are given ample chances to explore and are guided by adults equipped to support them. "STEM Starts Early" is the culmination of a deep inquiry by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and New America embarked on an exploratory…

Tomorrow's inventors and scientists are today's curious young children--as long as those children are given ample chances to explore and are guided by adults equipped to support them. "STEM Starts Early" is the culmination of a deep inquiry by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and New America embarked on an exploratory…

Scaling up educational interventions in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) field is critical but under-researched. We review and draw implications from a series of studies investigating the long-range impact of an implementation of an early mathematics scale-up model based on learning trajectories. Lasting effectiveness…

The authors consider mature make-believe play a critical component of childhood that helps children develop new skills and learn to communicate. They argue that, although theoretical accounts of play have emphasized the importance of make-believe play for children to achieve social and academic competence, the absence of a reliable and valid…

Increased attention has been given to learning trajectories (LT) as structural frameworks for educational instruction. The purpose of this study was to explore preschool teachers' descriptions of self-change, seven years after the start of their participation in LT-based professional development and instruction. This study was part of a larger…

Prior research shows that short-term effects from preschool may disappear, but little research has considered which environmental conditions might sustain academic advantages from preschool into elementary school. Using secondary data from two preschool experiments, we investigate whether features of elementary schools, particularly advanced…

A robust finding across research on early childhood educational interventions is that the treatment effect diminishes over time, with children not receiving the intervention eventually catching up to children who did. One popular explanation for fadeout of early mathematics interventions is that elementary school teachers may not teach the kind of…

Although there is growing interest in implementation fidelity, little research has been reported on the sustainability over time of faithful implementations of learning innovations. This study examined the sustainability of teachers' implementation fidelity to the components of a prekindergarten mathematics intervention two full years after…

For early childhood, the domain of geometry and spatial reasoning is an important area of mathematics learning. Unfortunately, geometry and spatial thinking are often ignored or minimized in early education. We build a case for the importance of geometry and spatial thinking, review research on professional development for these teachers, and…