A cultural-historical study of how educators create conditions for infant and toddler learning in science

Calls to bring more equity into science education research (McWayne and Melzi, 2023) are most notable for early childhood. We know very little about the teaching of science to infants and toddlers, yet this is where science education begins. To address the dearth in research, we undertook an in-depth intervention study in an Australian early childhood center with six educators working with 11 infants and toddlers learning science (1.1–2.0 years; mean 1.6) to identify how educators support science education for infants and toddlers in a play-based setting over 10 sessions. Specifically, our research question was how do educators create the conditions and interact with infants and toddlers in play-based setting to support the learning of science. We found a form of co-operation between educators and infants that centered on educator sensitivity to infants and toddlers noticing the science, educators generating rather than following infant interest, focused thinking spaces, use of scientific language by the educators, planned conceptual progression, and the use of props as placeholders for scientific meaning that acted as pivots and prompts for infants in imaginary situations. We argue that under the conditions of an intervention study where educators planned and taught science to infants, that greater insights into how to teach science to such young children was possible, thereby making available evidence-informed practice in an under researched area to guide educators working with infants and toddlers.