"Research Findings:" Promoting children's science knowledge by adequate measures such as guided or free play is a cardinal goal of preschool. However, there is considerable variability in preschool teachers' instructional quality in block play, which might be associated with children's domain-specific science skills but also their…

Science is an important domain in early childhood education. Though, initial results indicate that preschool teachers rarely offer science activities. Against this background professional development aims to encourage preschool teachers to provide science activities more frequently. In Germany, professional development is often offered as…

Cognitive activation is one of the central quality characteristics of teaching. Studies which analyzed cognitive activation in science instruction and its influence on the achievement and the interest of students, took most of the times place in higher grades. Since scientific thinking can be taught at a very early stage and, in particular,…

Background: The importance of diagnostic and scaffolding activities for early science learning has been shown consistently. However, preschool teachers scarcely engage in them. We developed an instrument to assess preschool teachers' willingness to engage in diagnostic and scaffolding activities in science learning situations and examined its…

Initial teacher education is the main opportunity to prepare pre-service preschool teachers to foster young children's science competences. Although initial teacher education is important for preschool teachers' later instruction in practice, little is known about early science education in initial teacher education. To gather first insights into…

Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR) are now wide open to all fields. The objectives of this study are to analyze the comparison of trend research on the top 200 cited AR and VR publications in all areas, to identify the comparison of trend mapping visualization on AR and VR publications in Physics learning research, to compare the…

Friedrich Fröbel is known as the founder of the modern kindergarten and for his development of novel learning materials called Gifts and Occupations. One of the foci of Fröbel's programme was mathematical education, which he addressed and taught through various activities that encouraged the largely implicit transmission of mathematical…

Regular science practices in preschool are crucial for children's learning in science. Yet, preschool teachers may only offer science learning opportunities if they "are" and "feel" sufficiently qualified to teach early science. The present study investigates the relation between teachers' qualifications, their self-efficacy…

Preschool teachers' domain-specific professional knowledge is assumed to play an important role in the quality of early childhood education and thus in young children's learning in different areas. Due to a lack of adequate instruments little is known about preschool teachers' science-specific knowledge. In order to develop such a test instrument,…

The Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) is an international, non-profit educational organization. The Association's purpose is to advance the knowledge, theory, and quality of teaching and learning at all levels with information technology. "EdMedia + Innovate Learning" took place in Amsterdam, The…

Preschool teachers' science-specific competences have been shown to influence their science instruction, which in turn appear directly related to the development of children's science competences. Initial teacher education and in-service professional development may include learning opportunities to acquire science-specific competences necessary…

"Creative Little Scientists" was a 30-month (2011-2014) EU/FP7-funded research project focusing on the synergies between early years science and mathematics education and the development of children's creativity, in response to increasing interest in these areas in European educational policy. Using a variety of methods, including desk…

In the light of the European Union's interest in creativity and innovation, this paper, drawing on data from the EU project Creative Little Scientists (2011-2014), explores the teaching and learning of science and creativity in Early Years education. The project's conceptual framework, developed from detailed analysis of relevant literatures,…

According to Klahr's (2000, 2005; Klahr & Dunbar, 1988) Scientific Discovery as Dual Search model, inquiry processes require three cognitive components: hypothesis generation, experimentation, and evidence evaluation. The aim of the present study was to investigate (a) when the ability to evaluate perfect covariation, imperfect covariation,…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 18th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2021), held virtually, due to an exceptional situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, from October 13-15, 2021, and organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society…