Young children and STEM educationEp 3, Prof Hamsa Venkat

Free play and fun, Lego and Barbie all get a mention in this fascinating discussion Louise has with Prof Hamsa Venkat, the Naughton Family Chair in Early Years/Primary STEM education in DCU.

They hear from children, parents and the facilitator of a Brickx club where, without realising it, young children were solving engineering and maths problems as they designed and built amazing creations during free play using Lego.

Prof Venkat says it is important to grow enthusiasm around STEM for children in early years and primary school settings as in Ireland, and other countries, she said not enough secondary school students are planning for careers that involve STEM subjects.

She also talks about the importance of supporting teachers who introduce and develop STEM learning in those settings and Louise shares her story about having a Barbie doll that said ‘math is hard.’

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Louise:
Hello, and welcome to the Teachers Inspire Podcast. I'm Louise O'Neill and I curate Teachers Inspire which is organised and run by Dublin City University.

We want to hear about the teacher who has made a difference in your life or in your child's life. So remember you can nominate them now for an award at teachersinspire.ie

On the podcast I talk to some of the amazing teachers and the people who nominated them. I also chat to other people who share their fascinating stories about teaching and teachers with me.

So we hear a lot about how important it is for children to learn more about science, technology, engineering and maths - the STEM subjects - and I suppose when we think about those subjects, you know, that really brings secondary school to mind.

So I'm really interested in this idea that it's really important that children are introduced to stem much earlier than that.

So that is something that my guest for this episode is going to chat to me about very shortly.

She is Prof Hamsa Venkat and she is the Naughton Family Chair in Early Years/Primary STEM education in DCU.

And as part of that, there is focus on supporting the development of STEM education with teaching that is skillful, responsive and oriented towards helping children to be - curious about, make sense of, and solve problems in - the world around them.

Now before we chat, Hamsa we are going to listen to a recording from our producer Elaine. She visited a Brickx club where all sorts of amazing creations are made from Lego and other bricks by children aged 4 to 12.

Clodagh Malone:
I'm Clodagh Malone and this is the Brickx Club, Dundalk. We do Lego free play. So, in Lego free play we would introduce different themes, say different STEM themes, different creative themes, for ages four to twelve years. I have 14 helpers here and they've, they've all been trained up in the STEM subjects. For example, today we've been doing rubber band themes, rubber band, cars, catapults… that kind of power you get from rubber bands..ehm.

Elaine:
When the children come here, they're playing and laughing. They're chatting to their friends, they're having fun. So - they're learning at the same time?

Clodagh Malone:
Yeah, well, I do believe that when children are having fun, that they have a greater capacity to learn. When it comes to them wanting to build their own stuff, they have to then start considering the problems they have, say take for instance, a simple tower.

So the tower the build the tower maybe 20 bricks high and it falls. So, then they have to start considering well, how can I make this stronger? So at every turn, there is a question. There's a ‘how things work’, which is, you know, the science that I feel that's what science is all about - how things work.

The engineering is, ‘how do I make it better,’ so how do I get this tower stay up? If I build a bridge, how do I make sure that it doesn't collapse when I put 20 minifigures on it?

Elaine:
So they're solving STEM problems in the STEM world while working and playing with Lego?

Clodagh Malone:
They don't even realise they're doing it.

Background sounds of the children playing and we hear a little boy who is building with Lego explaining what he is doing.

Elaine:
what do you think of what your son is doing here?

Father:
Oh, it's amazing. I really like… when we first brought him here we just wanted to see him react with other kids but then we seen he really had an interest in the Lego. And then when he went home, he really built amazing things which shocked me and his mum. So the more and more he comes the more and more he just...imagination runs wild with him.

Older boy:
I built Lego City, some of these bracelets, and I built a little car, a police station, a house, a solicitor's office and lots of other cool stuff.

Elaine to the boy’s younger sister:
What did you build?

Boy’s sister:
a house with little animals and ice cream.

Elaine:
What was the most fun thing?

Boy’s sister:
Making a movie.

Elaine:
You’re their mum?

Mother:
I am.

Elaine:
What do you think of this?

Mother:
It's fantastic. Alex has been doing the after-school Bricksx club for the last two years since he started in the school and then they do camps now. So Lily's only four but she absolutely loves it, they get to be with all their friends, they get to free play and the stuff that they come out with is unbelievable.

Elaine:
Do you think what they're learning here is going to stand to them as well as they go further on in their education?

Mother:
Absolutely. Like I was saying to them the other day, where do you come up with ideas? It's just, you know, they're not having to follow any instructions. It's just, they come up with an idea in their head and they put it into practice. So yeah, I think that can be applied in so many ways across life, whether they be future engineers, or architects or, or just whatever they want. So yeah, hopefully it will apply, it will stand to them.

End of insert

Louise:
Yes. Well, we had some very enthusiastic Lego builders there! You know what was interesting is like free play and fun was mentioned a lot there. And I think that we're almost suspicious of that when it comes to education because we think, I suppose we think of education in a very, maybe narrow focus.

So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about what you see the role of free play and introducing children to, and particularly young kids, to STEM?

Hamsa:
I think the point that you made about free play holds and it holds in even more stark ways when you think about STEM education, you know, traditionally how we think about mathematics and science education in schools in particular.

And what is really interesting is if we don't allow children to do free play -(and) they see it as quite normal when they're learning language and they're learning stories and they're learning about literature and reading - and in many ways we live in a culture where those skills are seen as very normal but we don't live in a culture where STEM is seen as particularly normal, that's (STEM is) formal, and it's about schooling and traditional teaching.

The broader evidence shows us that children by the time they get to post-primary schools, when they start kind of seriously thinking about what careers, what subjects they want to choose, the situation in Ireland and in many other parts of the world is that not enough people, not enough young people, are going into some very lucrative and very solid careers in the STEM fields. Post-primary appears to be too late to change their minds -

Louise:
Interesting…-

Hamsa:
- about STEM education and STEM careers on from that. So more and more the emphasis, as it is on the Naughton Chair that I hold, is that unless we can get children more enthusiastic about STEM in early years and primary schools, we've left it too late.

Louise:
Yeah.

Hamsa:
we're not going to get that changing in secondary schools. And that finding is even more stark for girls than for boys.

Louise:
I was about to ask - presuming that's more gendered?

Hamsa:
it is absolutely gendered in Ireland, in Ireland quite starkly and in other countries as well.

Louise:
And tell me, why do you think that is?

Hamsa:
I think we all come with a historical base that, you know, we learn that boys are good at math. And boys are the people who make scientists… that is starting to change but unless we do that quite intentionally, with young children and young girls in particular, we’re going to keep that imbalance going.

So it is really critical that early on and in the early years, just as you heard, those two lovely children who were just so comfortable playing with bricks, designing things, that's what they're doing, they're talking about building. They're thinking about the artifacts that they want to make the designs; the ‘what do you need to hold the animals that you're trying to put in there’, or to build a bridge. To get all of those things thought about and then, as children progress through schooling, start linking that with what we might see as more traditional science.

So I start asking questions about ‘so how big does your building have to be’ if we need to get like what animals are on your farm?

Louise:
Yeah.

Hamsa:
the three pigs and whatever, whatever… we can start having those conversations that start bringing things that we might see as more traditionally mathematical into the frame.

Louise:
Yeah. I've told this story on this podcast before but when I was a kid, I had a Barbie and you know, you'd press the Barbie and she would say things like ‘pink is my favourite colour,’ and ‘I want to go shopping,’ but one of the lines that she said was ‘math is hard.’ Obviously (it was) an American doll, you know, ‘math’ rather than ‘maths’ but, and I actually did really find maths difficult in school and it's, you know, you wonder afterwards, is that natural aptitude or was it just sort of the conditioning that I was getting that those subjects were maybe more masculine than, you know, that there were more for boys than for girls.

Hamsa:
I would absolutely disagree that subjects in anyway are kind of more inbuilt as more masculine or more feminine.

Louise:
- Yeah, of course, yeah.

Hamsa:
(but) I do think we are conditioned to think of things that way and it's just as bad for boys as it is for girls. I mean boys get written out of somethings. girls get written out of somethings. It isn't helpful, from the point of view of the life chances that we want to give our children, that we think that way.

That said, that experience that you talked about of not finding yourself very comfortable with mathematics at school is a broadly experienced one and science, particularly physics later on, suffers from that same kind of reputation.

(That) It's hard, it's difficult, it's impersonal, it's abstract…And I think that's about helping teachers and a lot of the work that we do is about working with teachers to feel more comfortable about the STEM subjects because if teachers are comfortable, they will communicate that enthusiasm.

Louise:
Yes.

Hamsa:
And (communicate) that skill to children as well. And I think a lot of what we've seen historically in schools is that primary teachers in particular, who are often generalists, are not particularly comfortable with the STEM subjects themselves and some of that sense, inadvertently, gets communicated.

Louise:
Yeah. Did you come up against any of that when you were in school? Did you come up against any of that kind of gendered conditioning or…

Hamsa:
personally, I will probably say more so in science; less so in mathematics but I also had a family behind me telling me it was perfectly okay to do mathematics. I have a sister who majored in English, and I majored in Mathematics in university. So, we have, we have two people who kind of went opposite ways, both of us kind of quite liking the other subject as well.

But we know that it's not everybody's experience and that is about supporting teachers to get more comfortable with the subjects if we are going to break that vicious cycle and it is starting to break; the numbers are looking more positive as we go forward and I think teacher education has done/ is starting to do its work.

Louise:
And so when you talk about like, STEM from very early education, like what you were saying there is that you can start with, let's say with something like bricks and how does that kind of work its way up, let's say from four to twelve?

Hamsa:
So in a range of different ways just (like) with some of those examples that you heard about building a bridge. Now, when children have built a building a bridge with Lego, in many ways, all they're thinking about is can I make sure it doesn't collapse in front of me?

[laughter]

Hamsa:
We're not necessarily talking about the things that engineers might do with a bridge, which is actually going further than that, it's thinking about what materials would I need to use.

So I can start introducing elements of those conversations. Now, I can't do it only with Lego bricks but if I had string, if I had glue, if I had paper, if I had cardboard, if I had other materials to think about, I can start having conversations about, well, what do I need to use in my building so that the bridge is stronger?

What amount of cars can stand on this bridge before it starts falling down (and) now I start to get into the realm of the kinds of conversations that we might have done as a traditional science experiment.

Louise:
Yeah.

Hamsa:
And that's what we're starting to build into as we get through from the four to twelve (age) range: we're talking about the language that goes with mathematics and science and the STEM subjects and we're starting to introduce the more formal concepts.

So in mathematics, that would be about things like number, quantity, space and how we think about space, how we think about measurement. And in science, it could be all about the properties of materials, how things come together, and how things work, what makes things move and what are the forces behind that, that make that happen?

Louise
Yeah because when you when you say it like that, it sounds fun like, you know, as we were talking about earlier on about like that idea of free play and I'm wondering, do you think that, that kind of enthusiasm around STEM, does that impact, like with the children, does that impact their learning with other subjects, you know, that are obviously non-stem?

Hamsa:
Again, there is some evidence in other parts of the world that children who do well with early STEM, because they're broadening their repertoire of language and concepts, that feeds into every day, into kind of our ability to read and make sense of text.

So actually our language skills get better and broader, our repertoire for doing all of that get broader as well. So, I think absolutely STEM does pay off in the same way that early reading pays off in many subjects beyond just reading and language.

Louise:
Yeah. Anhere in Ireland, are they like, are they making any provisions for this? Like, is there any sort of long-term plan on how to introduce more STEM through fun and whether through free play or whether through like a more formal education setting, like, is there a movement towards trying to create provisions for STEM education at a younger age?

Hamsa:
Absolutely. So and it's one of the exciting things about being here at this particular point is that there's now a new early years curriculum called the Aistear curriculum.

And there's a new primary curriculum framework, both of which are promoting STEM within them. So that's quite exciting, particularly because they're talking about free play as, you know, play based methodologies, as a way of introducing children to these concepts and ideas and building those, as you've said, from allowing children just to play with the material at an early stage, and building that through into what looks much more like a formal mathematics and formal science and formal technology curricula, just as you heard that that little girl on the video saying ‘I'm making a movie.’

Louise:
yeah.

Hamsa:
Now I assume if she's making a movie, she's going to be using some technology to do that with. Now we might think, God you know, we would never have thought about dreaming about making a movie when we were four (years of age) and that's all accessible to children because the technology supports them to do it.

And I think allowing them to do those things later on but supporting them really carefully with skillful teaching along the way, will build, and I'm fairly confident, that it will build and translate into more children willing to think about STEM careers later on.

Louise:
Yeah, and how do we improve that? Like, let's say, if you were okay, I'm going to make you, the leader of the world, you can put any rules that you want, well maybe we'll just focus on STEM… So tell me like, if you had, you know, complete carte blanche to sort of change the education system, what provisions would you put in place to improve STEM education?

Hamsa:
I would say the absolute priority is going to be making sure you've got a kind of a teacher group, who can capitalise on where policy is going. And that's urgent to do because the policy is already in place in many ways. And we've started that work, we started it at DCU and we know other institutions nationally are also doing that.

If you don't have teachers on the ground, who are able to capitalise on that, then, you know, playing with bricks as those lovely children are doing on your video, that dies in the ground, it stops at playing, playing with Lego.

In the same way, just as you said, your Barbie doll used to say, ‘I don't like maths or maths is hard.’ We've gone beyond saying maths is hard now to saying maths is possible.

And we need teachers able to support, to see the enthusiasm, to see that you had a question about that even when you were quite young, and say, well, there's something there that I can capitalise on and I can build on and take that forward. So, teacher education, absolutely.

Materials are coming through and the materials are going to be important to support teachers, but also support parents,

Louise:
when you say materials?

Hamsa:
ideas for STEM projects if you like…

Louise:
okay

Hamsa:
just like those children who are building a building or are building a bridge, whatever it is, and you need some support for teachers to say, well, yeah, we're going to play and we're going to build bridges, or we're going to build cars. What kinds of language might we be introducing?

How is it that we get a car - now we've been used to doing cars that I might have done just a push with my finger - but you've got materials in the Lego kits now that will put a little battery inside and allow the car to move with its own little engine?

What kinds of conversations might I be having as a parent of a three-year-old or a four-year-old, to start introducing questions, asking questions about that kind of thing and then how do I help teachers to move that language forward as well?

Louise:
Yes. And I suppose if you were a parent of let's say, you have a boy and a girl, and you want both of them to be equally interested in this, but also, I suppose to feel that, for both of them to feel, that this is something that is for them, like what do you think that looks like going forward trying to make sure that women do feel more like included in this space?

Hamsa:
I'd be very comfortable with buying them both Lego kits, I mean that that's, that's a really nice start. But it's also about the building blocks and, and the other materials that you might need for it.

I would say, you know, all of that stuff about play-based approaches say we follow up on children's interests.

As a parent it's important to be alert to the fact (that) children are individuals, they're going to have their own interests. We're just alert to the fact that we don't want to go down gendered routes that close off some opportunities for our boys, or for our girls.

I would simply say follow up on the interests as you find them, whatever those interests are there will be STEM language and STEM activities that you can do that are responsive to those interests, and then take them forward. Because it can go far - that initial interest that as parents that we show.

Louise:
Yeah. And I mean, of course, I suppose having, as you said, the teachers that are educated and enthusiastic about STEM is really important. I mean, did you have that? I mean, obviously, you know, we're here on the Teachers Inspire podcast talking about inspiring teachers, is there anyone in particular from your school days that you can remember that really, like I suppose, helped foster that love of STEM?

Hamsa:
So I would say I had. I was lucky, I had, I had good teaching, I grew up in London, (was) in a comprehensive school in London. I had good science teaching and good maths teaching, but I would say, which is probably true of my generation, that was really starting to kick in at secondary school.

And I think by that time, as I'm saying to you now, I'd probably already written myself out of science. Now I did carry on with the maths. And I see some wonderful teachers, wonderful teacher educators at DCU where I work and I think God I would have loved to play in the same way that they are so beautifully able to do.

Louise:
Yeah

Hamsa:
and there might have been a different career opportunity for me, because I do quite like Lego and I played with Lego at home so I certainly had Lego access but not in ways that necessarily took me into the scientific concepts underneath them.

Louise:
Yeah. I mean, this is really interesting, but I think if we're thinking of like toddlers, or, I mean, should, can they do anything with this or can parents of toddlers do anything? Or is that just too young, and we need to just only be focusing on children who are at playschool…?

Hamsa:
there are I mean, there are some really lovely projects out there and you'll see them if you look online as well.

I've also got wonderful colleagues who do a load of work, because they work in in early childhood centres, who are good at starting with one-year olds, because you've got, you've got very tiny children who are starting. These children are interested in the world, and they might talk about the shells that they saw as they walked, you know, on the beach.

They might talk about litter that they've seen strewn around on the beach, they might talk about the pets that they've got at home or a farm that they visited.

Now, all of those, all of those kind of lead to issues and problems and concerns and interests that are in our world and children come very naturally interested in the world.

Now the world has huge room for improving, for designing and design is a key part of engineering which is what STEM is about.

It's not engineering in the way that engineers might talk about it, but it's the beginnings of that.

Louise:
yes.

Hamsa:
We can talk about the things that we eat, we can talk about the diet, why do we say that some things are healthy, and some things are unhealthy? What makes some foods healthy and unhealthy?

Louise:
And what would that be related to in terms of STEM?

Hamsa:
Well, you know, eventually all the stuff that we eat, the sugar in your foods would bleed into biology, our physiology…

Louise:
Yes of course.

Hamsa:
It's what doctors have to care about all the time. All of those conversations are the kinds of things that open up a world to young children and children come very, very naturally interested in the world.

It's about whether we can be interested enough as parents and as educators to follow up and respond to those interests and rather than say, ‘very good, very nice move on,’ instead to follow up and engage in those conversations and work on expanding them.

Louise:
Yes, I think that, I mean, that would be amazing; is there anything that you would say to parents - oh, that's actually quite a good educational programme.

Hamsa:
that there are lots of great websites, the STEM ones are beginning to emerge, and you'll see that there are there are Lego websites, but they're also things like early coding websites -

Louise:
Amazing.

Hamsa:
and early computing kind of websites. There are also some lovely maths websites for young children to be playing with. Lots of build design kinds of activities that children can be engaged in. Many of those now on iPads which children have got access to.

Yes, we want to kind of control the amount of time that children spend on screen but it's quite nice when you start to see children developing the motor skills that they need, because they're trying to copy a building, but they're also trying to look, and they might be trying to recreate a design that looks like something that they've got on screen.

And you can see it when young children draw pictures, that the move from what they're scribbling when they're one to what they're scribbling at two and three, it does look different.

Louise:
Yes.

Hamsa:
The way that they can talk about those pictures and describe the features of those pictures looks different.

Louise:
Yes.

Hamsa:
And to be alert to, to be aware, to be thinking how much fun is this to be engaged in those conversations?!

Louise:
Yeah.

Hamsa:
And as a skillful educator to kind of be able to recognise that you've had a job in building and bringing this forward, is a hugely privileged work and usually fun work as the adult involved in doing that kind of thing as well.

Louise:
It’s amazing. I didn't have any Lego as a child so now I feel like I can blame my parents!

Hamsa:
I didn't have a Barbie!

[laughter]

Louise:
Yeah. Well, look, I think you were probably better off by the sounds of things. Thank you so much for talking to me today Hamsa.

Hamsa:
Pleasure, it's been lovely.

Louise:
Now remember, you can find out more about Teachers Inspire, you can nominate your teacher for the award, and you can find links to other episodes of the podcast at teachersinspire.ie.

Or you can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Until next time.

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