The sociocultural construction of early childhood science learning: Learning of scientific concepts within situated playful encounters in early childhood contexts

Early childhood centres organise learning for young children through playful and experience-based contexts. The families of these young children are closely involved in their children s education often as translators of their child s home and community environments. Playful learning contexts are quite different to school classrooms. However, current pedagogy for teaching scientific thinking in early childhood is based primarily upon research conducted in schools with older children. This study will map how children s scientific thinking is transformed and appropriated within the sociocultural context of early childhood, and to build models of teaching science suitable for supporting early childhood teachers in play-based environments