Children, Youth and Environments 21(2), 2011

Early Engineering in Young Children’s Exploratory Play with Tangible Materials

Diana Bairaktarova

School of Engineering Education, Purdue University

Demetra Evangelou School of Engineering Education, Purdue University

Aikaterini Bagiati

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Sean Brophy School of Engineering Education, Purdue University

Citation: Diana Bairaktarova, Demetra Evangelou, Aikaterini Bagiati, and Sean Brophy (2011). “Early Engineering in Young Children’s Exploratory Play with Tangible Materials.” Children, Youth and Environments 21(2): 212-235. Retrieved [date] from http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Abstract The developmental importance of play in early childhood is well documented. However, little research exists to date to describe how child play relates to engineering thinking. The goal of this study is to determine whether spontaneously occurring classroom play and involvement with open, semi-structured and structured artifacts such as sandboxes, water tables, and puzzles, may reveal precursors to engineering thinking and acting. To gather such evidence we conducted a series of naturalistic field observations of preschool children engaged in free play with these artifacts. This study describes ways this play activity enables children’s involvement with engineering ideas and engineering activities. Findings from this study contribute to our understanding of how play environments can become vehicles for enhancement of early engineering knowledge and action. Keywords: children, play, play environments, developmental engineering,

engineering thinking

� 2011 Children, Youth and Environments

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A child’s greatest achievements are possible in play—achievements that tomorrow will become his average level of real action and his morality (Plato).

Introduction Active, naturalistic pedagogies for children indicate a strong commitment to the idea that environments matter and that intentionally designed educational settings have a lasting impact on individuals, as well as groups (Reynolds et al. 2011). As scholars, researchers, practitioners, and parents, we are all committed to affecting growth and learning by selecting, modifying and continuously revising physical-formal and informal education settings, as well as the human aspects of the environment, to complement, compensate, support, expand and otherwise enhance children’s lives. Contemplating the interaction between the environment and the organism is perhaps as old as collective memory itself. However, the disciplinary context has shifted over time as the particular philosophical, anthropological, social and psychological perspectives have evolved. Today, interdisciplinary studies highlight a new literacy centered on the need for deep understanding of the roles Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) play in the development of individuals and communities. Whereas in the past, literacy was defined in terms of linguistic preparation, access and success, today, a different literacy is advocated around notions of STEM competence. As is often the case with novel areas of developmental science, understanding the origins of the phenomenon we refer to as “early engineering” is key. Early engineering is a new field of study exploring the relationship between early childhood development and education and the fields of engineering. In this new field, a number of large questions emerge, such as how can contemporary interdisciplinary notions of STEM include early education and development? Is this inquiry reasonable, possible, feasible or even desirable (Evangelou 2010)? What would be the effects, the potential impact, and the relation to larger questions of social impact and national importance (Katehi, Pearson and Feder 2009)? Responses to these questions will emerge from a variety of sources including policy conversations and scholarly debates, but they should ultimately include research evidence derived from empirical studies. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative research study designed to explore the free play of preschool-age children and argues that children exhibit precursor-to-engineering behaviors while interacting with tangible, open, semi-structured and structured material. Environment in Early Childhood Education While the core of human development involves relationships with other human beings, these relationships are mediated by the environment—one that is rich with human-made artifacts. From the built environment to books and toys, early educators extract and create content, which they then use to engage children in intellectually stimulating and socially enhancing ways. Walking around the school

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neighborhood, planting seeds, caring for pets, reading books, examining the pattern of stones—all these contain educational potential at the preschool level. Organizing this content in ways that correspond to conventional scientific areas encourages children to develop future interests. This is one of the stated goals of most high-quality early education programs (National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) 2003) To achieve this, we must pay attention to how children learn in unique, informal and varied ways such as interacting with the human-made elements of the environment. Curiosity about the environment, the wish to explore new situations and places, the need to manipulate and experiment with new objects and materials, these are the natural ways of childhood. Children’s thinking can be observed while using play materials, drawing pictures, writing or dictating stories, doing specific educational activities, experimenting and discussing. Observations focusing on the child’s thought processes, awareness of the content and scope of his knowledge, and understanding of the effects of culture, family, community and school, provide information that helps teachers select appropriate materials and plan relevant curriculum (Cohen, Stern and Balaban 1997; Elkind 2008; Graue and Walsh 1998). Several notable examples take these principles into consideration while designing learning environments for young children. For example, the play-as-environment perspective discussed in the next section is evident in the Reggio Emilia approach where the environment, (the classroom) is considered the “third teacher.” Teachers carefully coordinate space for small and large group projects and small, intimate spaces for one, two, or three children. Documentation of children's work, plans, and collections that children have made, are displayed at eye level for both children and adults (Edwards, Gandini and Forman 1993). Play as Environment Children work hard at discovering and creating meaning in everything they encounter. Both Piaget (1962) and Vygotsky (1967) stressed the importance of play for cognitive development and argued that “intelligence” is a multifaceted set of abilities not confined solely to verbal competence and mathematical aptitude. By nature, children’s understanding is limited by an egocentric understanding of things they encounter. Unless restricted by adults—learning only what adults want them to learn—children prefer to explore freely in a variety of directions. Piaget and Vygotsky both argue for the value of play while acknowledging that these theoretical postulations give rise to methodological challenges of making learning visible and revealing development in ecologically sound ways. Play can be seen as a tool, a way to measure and understand development not recognized by using standardized tests (Katz and Chard 1989). As Cohen, Stern and Balaban (1997) state, “the conceptualization that marks true intellectual development is not quantitative—as the sheer accumulation of facts is—but qualitative” (119). While varying degrees of spontaneity are characteristic of all child behavior, at the apex of spontaneity is play (Huizinga 1950). A long standing and robust bibliographical record attests to the developmental and evolutionary significance of this universal human behavior, with multiple points of view and studies all

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validating this phenomenon as the developmental medium par excellence for the early years. Virtually all aspects of development are discernable through the study of play behavior, where integration is visible through children’s self-organized thoughts and actions (Smith-Sutton 2008; Henricks 2008; Bergen 2002; Elkind 2008). Further review of the literature shows that developmental theory and empirical research firmly support the hypothesis that objects and their use by children constitute a universal part of development and learning (Lobo and Galloway 2008). While playing, children develop academic, social, artistic, creative and cognitive skills (Michnick Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek and Singer 2006; Berger 2002; Michnick Golinkoff, et al. 2009; Scales, Nicolopoulou and Tripp 1991). Since children’s play naturally employs skills of observation and experimentation, it can also lead to the development of specific process models for how things should be constructed and how things work, thus signaling important elements of engineering thinking. Early Childhood Curriculum The developmental importance of play resulting from its spontaneous and exploratory nature is well documented. However, educators also use play as a vehicle for the delivery of specific educational content. Counting games, fantasy play, and computer games all use play as a way to deliver content and evaluate development in young children. Of the wide range of subject matter available in early childhood education, science, mathematics and technology are considered significant curricular content areas. Through a series of position statements, reports, and other sponsored activities and publications, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) advocates the inclusion of such content as evidence of developmentally appropriate best practices (NAEYC 1996; 2002). These recommendations are supported by empirical findings from a variety of developmental and educational perspectives. A well-developed body of knowledge exists regarding the ways in which young children acquire knowledge in these domains (Gelman and Brenneman 2004), as well as the pedagogical methods appropriate for long-term participation and achievement. For example, young children’s success with arithmetic counting suggests that the meaning of the counting system is tied to its relation to principles of natural-number arithmetic. Given this understanding of counting, children notice that the repeated placement of one item into a collection increases its value (Gelman 2006). With training in the use of numbers, length, liquid and quantity amounts, children connect natural numbers with addition and subtraction. Similarly, the work of Vosniadou and colleagues has shown that children, with the support of relevant environmental scaffolds such as tools, maps, and play-dough, develop an understanding of complex ideas from astronomy and physics (Vosniadou, Skopeliti and Ikospentaraki 2005). In all these instances, seemingly difficult subject matter is transformed to match the young learner’s needs, levels of understanding, and ways of knowing. To bring science, mathematics, and technology into the early education classroom, spiral notions of curricula, project-based approaches, and activity-oriented curricula continue to be employed (Katz and Chard 1989; Hoisington 2010; Reynolds et al. 2011; Sarama and Clements 2009; Bergen 2009).

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Until recently, of all STEM disciplines, engineering has remained notably absent from K-12 curricula. Currently, because of changes already under way on a large national scale (Katehi, Pearson and Feder 2009), to some extent engineering has found its way into high-school curricula. To understand what engineering means at an elementary school age level, Oware (2008) proposes that a child has to involve internal mental processes, arguing

The child must assimilate the concept of engineering through psychological processes. An educator can help a child learn about engineering, but cannot force a child to learn about [engineering] by simply telling the child a definition and having the child memorize and repeat that definition (Oware 2008, 24).

Bagiati (2011) designed and tested a developmentally appropriate early engineering curriculum, and implemented a hands-on children-driven experiential approach. During large and small group time, and free play time in a carefully scaffolded classroom environment, children constructed their own unique path to engineering knowledge by participating in a child-driven, three-month long engineering design project (Bagiati 2011; Bagiati and Evangelou 2011). Given what Oware and Bagiati report on children’s learning processes, studies of early engineering should be designed based children’s preexisting knowledge and abilities that support their construction of knowledge. Free play provides the opportunity to observe this trajectory. Establishing early engineering as part of engineering education calls for bridging engineering content with early childhood practice. This new interdisciplinary area poses methodological challenges that may require the development of novel research approaches that begin with a new definition of what constitutes engineering at varying levels of development. In this paper, we propose that using observational data is an appropriate point of departure for developing such an approach, as this method is useful in establishing reasonable inferential understanding about the behaviors of young children. Previous Work According to Evangelou (2010), exploring children’s engineering thinking is warranted within the Developmental Engineering hypothesis, which states that young children’s exploratory, inquisitive, and creative behaviors resemble traits highly desirable in engineering (Evangelou in Adams et al. 2011). Preliminary research findings examining the developmental appropriateness of introducing engineering at an early age suggest that activities and material related to engineering are suitable for young children (Bagiati 2011). Additionally, and maybe even more importantly, these findings suggest that precursors to engineering knowledge and behaviors are already present in children of preschool age (Brophy and Evangelou 2007; Evangelou 2010; Meeteren and Zan 2010; Bagiati 2011). Studies of preschoolers engaging in block-building activities and play projects have focused on instances or patterns of the engineering design process, and on ways in which children construct and communicate their designs as evidence

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of precursors to engineering thinking (Johnsey 1995; Brophy and Evangelou 2007; Bagiati 2011; Bagiati and Evangelou 2011). Findings from these studies support the hypothesis that early engineering-related behaviors are present in the play. A study by Brophy and Evangelou (2007) focused on the processes that young children use to build with blocks. In their analysis of a series of videotaped vignettes, the researchers conclude that children are as interested in the process as they are in the product, at least while they are actively engaged in construction. Another recent study by Evangelou and colleagues (2010) explores preschool children’s interactions with artifacts under three different conditions: in sketches, as part of a story, and in actual physical form. The hypothesis was that the physical, tangible object condition would elicit more questions and exploration, and the findings showed that this condition elicited the longest discussions and interactions with the artifacts. It was also the condition during which children demonstrated more knowledge and produced more ideas regarding the potential functions of the artifacts. More recently, Bagiati (2011) reported that engineering thinking was identified in a variety of instances such as during large group discussions, in small group hands-on activities with peers, and sometimes while carefully observing other children’s final products or construction processes while playing (Bagiati 2011; Bagiati and Evangelou 2011). The Present Study The present study reports evidence on children’s interactions with different materials and identifies play behaviors regarded as precursors to engineering thinking. Using analysis of videotaped data showing how children engage in free play with open, semi-structured, and structured artifacts such as sandboxes, water tables, drawings, puzzles, and snap circuits, we search for the existence of early engineering thinking. Tangible, manipulable materials have been part of early childhood education classrooms for a very long time. From Froebel’s work in the 1820s (Provenzo 2009) to Montessori in the 1920s (McNeil and Uttal 2009), to the overabundance of today’s commercial products, early childhood education settings are places where human-made artifacts are used as curricular props aiding development and learning. Of the wide variety and diversity of options, for this study we selected open-ended unstructured materials, semi-structured artifacts and structured artifacts (Berger 2009). We selected open-ended unstructured materials because these are typically incorporated into structured settings in ways that match what is available to children playing openly and freely in nature. In fact, in non-industrialized settings, loose materials like water and sand and different raw materials like cotton and grain are all part of child play. These types of materials offer a lot of different opportunities, but like all materials, they also present constraints on their use. We selected semi-structured materials and artifacts (i.e., any human-made objects) because they are the result of engineering thought, creativity, and labor. These provide the benefit of bringing engineering into the classroom in a manner that is simple, effective and developmentally appropriate.

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These materials and artifacts can be used to introduce young children to engineering in a way that is concrete, accessible and relevant. By systematically introducing different objects to explore similar concepts—for instance, building/designing with snap circuits or sand towers, rather than blocks—we could monitor the environments where young children create their knowledge while playing/working with different artifacts. Children employ a number of different materials when they engage in various types of play. During what is known as sensory play, children often use materials such as sand and water (open materials). In this context, play usually involves the handling of these materials, for example, running one’s hands through sand or splashing in the water. Semi-structured or step-by-step play includes engaging with artifacts that, while constructed for a specific purpose, allow the children to use the artifacts creatively. In this project we focus on paints and paper as an example of step-by-step play. Structured play includes the use of artifacts specifically created for young children, for example, puzzles, board games, and snap circuits. Our study describes ways these artifacts afford children’s involvement with engineering ideas and engineering activities like design planning, execution, and evaluation. It also examines children’s problem statements and solutions, interactions and peer group collaborations, structure and questioning processes, communication of ideas, and descriptions of creations (Bergen 2009). Method Theoretical Framework In a broad sense, the research focuses on informal play as a setting for active learning and development of engineering thinking. To establish a research paradigm within Developmental Engineering, we begin by trying to understand the nature of the interactions that characterize the development of engineering thinking as a unique set of approaches to problems and solutions and their implications for human society (Petroski 1996; Koen 2003; Goldberg 2006). To that end we employ an eco-behavioral framework. According to Greenwood and colleagues (1985), an eco-behavioral framework “implies assessment and intention designed to reveal sequential concurrent interrelationships between environmental stimuli and organism response” (Greenwood, Arreaga-Mayer and Clark-Preston 1985). “Eco-behavioral” in educational settings is a term used in studying not only the relationship between the academic performance of children and the curriculum, the physical arrangements of the classroom, and the teacher’s behavior, but also in studying the non-social character of these stimuli events. Given the emphasis on the children’s interaction with tangible manipulative material, this framework adds an essential perspective, as it enables us to document and assess the transient interrelationships of the environmental, physical, and social stimuli temporally associated with children’s behavior (Greenwood, Arreaga-Mayer and Clark-Preston 1985). Participants and Setting Participants in the study were 18 children, eight girls and ten boys, aged 3 to 5

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years. The study was conducted in two mixed-age preschool classrooms in a university-affiliated developmental center. In these classrooms, different materials—ranging in openness and degree of structure, each affording different opportunities for exploration, composition, construction—evoked play behaviors deemed important in engineering praxis. Play materials were part of the standard curriculum of the classroom and were selected by the teachers. These materials fit developmental criteria typical for early childhood education classrooms. On a daily basis, various materials were available in different playing areas in the classroom. Children selected the type of material they want as well as the manner and duration of their interactions with materials. Even though the teacher predetermined the number of children permitted in each activity area, she closely monitored the movement of children around each area, making sure that a child who had waited to access a particular activity was actually given an opportunity to do so. A free-play context where children interacted with a variety of materials was deemed appropriate for observing engineering related behaviors, since interactions with materials of all types reside at the heart of engineering activity, serving as the source of inspiration, a natural constraint factor in the design, or an opportunity for an alternative design testing. Data Collection The study began with an extended period of familiarization where the researchers spent time in the classroom getting to know the children, in routines and different play activities. This was followed by a series of field observations where the children engaged in free play with various open, as well as semi-structured and structured artifacts, such as blocks, puzzles, Lego™ blocks, sandboxes, water tables, and snap circuits. When data collection commenced, two (out of a group of four) researchers observed and videotaped the 18 children during their free playtime for approximately two hours every morning, over a period of four months. Editing the videos resulted in 14.5 hours of “clean” video data in total. In this paper, data related to blocks and Lego™ blocks was excluded, as they have been partially reported in the Brophy and Evangelou (2007) study. The analysis presented here is derived from approximately eight hours of video. Data Analysis The goal of the analysis was to examine the videotaped data and identify commonalities between children’s interactions with artifacts or raw materials and the engineering-related behaviors perceived as precursors to engineering. Because the intersection of early education and engineering is in a nascent state, there are no preexisting categories of observable behaviors. We have attempted to bridge the two areas by first creating a list of behaviors that describe the engineering field based on expert judgment and relevant literature, and then creating a list of possible behaviors that are typical in an early education classroom. Goal-directed behaviors are tightly related to engineering. Therefore, engineering-related behaviors were expected to reside within activities that included specific goals driving children’s interactions with the artifacts or the raw materials. As a next step, within a phenomenological perspective, we used open coding to

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identify instances of goal-directed behaviors appearing in the playing activities, as well as children’s emotional reactions at the time. For coding purposes, we defined a videotaped playing activity as a complete play sequence starting with a clean field of action, tabletop, or floor space, where a child begins to use the material to create, build, construct, and otherwise produce a loosely defined structure through a process. A single playing activity may include the circumstances in which the children have left the setting and returned to it later. Each activity was analyzed for instances appearing on the list of predefined engineering-related behaviors. Although children’s motor behavior was the primary source of data observed and coded, children’s verbal utterances were used to clarify or support inferences regarding children’s goal-directed intentions. These included instances where the children asked questions as evidence of stating problems blocking their initial goal, the types of problems children were trying to solve. In the analysis we included examples of how these categories manifested themselves in the data. One researcher completed initial coding. In order to establish reliability, three other coders recoded 33 percent of data each using the same coding scheme. Reliability was calculated by comparing the number of agreements and disagreements of each researcher with the initial coding, and calculating the average percentage of agreement. Reliability was found to be 95 percent. Findings This section describes the tangible materials, the tools, used in each classroom and provides illustrative vignettes of individual or group activities that include instances of engineering-related behaviors. The vignettes are carefully selected to illustrate the different types of children's involvement in the activities. They are categorized according to the nature of the materials used: open or sensorial materials, semi-structured or step-by-step materials, and structured or closed materials. Open (Sensorial) Materials: Sandbox and Water Table Sand, water, and play-dough are common materials used in sensory play. Play in this situation usually involves the handling of these materials, for example, running hands through the sand or splashing hands in the water. Play also includes the manipulation of these materials for different purposes, e.g. for construction, in combination with other artifacts, such as playing with plastic toys in the water. This type of play is crucial for the physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development of children. Sensorial materials used in the observed classrooms were a sandbox (Figure 1) and a water table (Figure 2). The sandbox included sand, buckets, shovels, small track toys, and large PVC pipes in elbow and T-shapes. The water table contained water, aquarium nets, plastic tubes, and plastic toy animals (Jarret et al. 2010).

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Figure 1. Children playing with sandbox

Figure 2. Matt and Zack playing with water table

There were several examples of children playing with these materials. The vignettes below provide an illustration of group and solitary play.

Sandbox – Group Play Nick and Clayton are playing in the sandbox area; both seem engrossed with filling their small buckets with sand. While Clayton wants to use his hands to accomplish this task, Nick uses a small truck shovel. He uses a technique of skimming the sand with the shovel and delivering it into the bucket; he fills his bucket significantly faster than Clayton. He notices the difference in the level of sand between his bucket and the other boy’s. Nick distributes the sand from his bucket between the two buckets using the shovel and tops both up with sand from the sandbox until both buckets are filled to the top. Nick exclaims, ‘see how full it got.’ After playing with the sand for a few

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minutes, patting it in the bucket and redistributing it, the two boys begin to clean up sand that has fallen onto the floor. Both are using dust pans and small brooms, and while one of the boys is sweeping the sand aimlessly, the other sweeps the sand directly into the dust pan, fills it, and returns the sand to the sandbox. A third boy joins the cleaning activity; he also begins sweeping the sand into a dustpan. The third boy then says that there is only dust on the floor, not sand. The boy who was returning sand to the sandbox now begins making trips to and throwing the sand in a nearby trashcan. After a short time, all three boys begin to use their dustpans to fill their buckets with sand. Using the dustpans they fill their buckets much quicker than before. They begin to exclaim while laughing and talking loudly to each other. This attracts the attention of the teacher who takes the dustpans away from the children and says, ‘dustpans are used for sweeping the floor, not for filling buckets.’

This brief play sequence demonstrates several facets of behaviors related to both early childhood cognitive development and engineering, such as experimenting, observing results, and drawing conclusions (as one boy does when he realizes that using the shovel fills the buckets more quickly). Other such behaviors include identifying and solving problems and sharing solutions. One boy demonstrates such behavior when he, on observing that another boy’s bucket is not filling as fast as his, proceeds to fill it using the shovel. Adjusting behavior based on new information was another aspect observed. One boy, when told that he is picking up dust and not sand, stops placing it in the sandbox and takes it to the trashcan. The last observable behavior presented in the vignette above is innovation, demonstrated when the boys use the dustpans to fill their buckets with sand. Additionally, the children display positive emotions based on their successes using their tools to fill their buckets.

Sandbox – Individual Play Michael plays in a sandbox using a toy steam shovel to fill with sand four PVC pipes with two different shapes. The pipes are in the shape of a T (three openings 90 degrees apart) and an elbow. Michael attempts to fill the elbow with sand from both ends. He occasionally bends his head from side to side, examines the fruits of his efforts, and determines if there remains room for additional sand in the elbow. After some time, he puts the two T-shaped pipes together with the two PVC elbows. He connects all the pipes at each end lengthwise. As Michael tries to fill the pipes with sand from either end, he discovers that he cannot fill the middle of his latest creation from the ends. He experiments and discovers that he can fill the tubes from the openings on the top of the T-shaped pipes. The boy’s steam truck becomes lodged into one end of pipe, and he lifts the pipe into the air and frees the truck.

This vignette also demonstrates instances of engineering-related behaviors. Monitoring is demonstrated when the boy continuously checks his progress towards his goal. Creative and innovative thinking is demonstrated when the boy joins the

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pipes together. When he finds an alternate way to fill the pipe and free the stuck truck, he demonstrates identifying and solving a problem. The next vignette is an illustration of play with a water table. Water tables are commonly found in preschool classrooms. Children use their minds as they explore why certain objects sink in water and others float. Children learn concepts such as empty/full, before/after, shallow/deep, and heavy/light in a hands-on way.

Water Table – Group Play A boy feels the aquarium net with his hands and slowly places it on the water table. At first Matt does not try to catch anything, but then begins to flourish the net and catches a few fish, pulls the net out and handles both the fish and the net. In the meantime another boy, Zack, joins the water table station. When the teacher asks Matt to pick up a pink butterfly for her, the boy starts to trace the toys in the water, identifying the ones that are similar in color to pink. The other boy picks up a purple fish with his hands and shows it to the teacher. Then Zack returns the purple fish to the water and keeps his fingers and his aquarium net in the water, saying ‘fish, fish, fish…’ then he fills the net with fish using his hands. Zack then asks the teacher to pull out his sleeves since they are both wet. He finds a gold piece in the water and turns to the teacher and says to her: ‘sand… fish, all kinds of fish.’ The teacher asks Zack whether the net is heavy and he replies ‘no’ while he keeps filling the net to the top. Then he turns and says, ‘now I have it full’ before he empties the net back into the water.

This vignette displays several stages common in play. Both boys manipulated their nets and placed them in the water, testing the materials and preparing themselves. Thus, both boys went through the first functional stage of play: exploring the water with their senses, learning what water is like, and discovering what can be done with it. After this functional stage, the boys moved from exploring water to using it in what is known as a constructive stage of play. In the next stage, this developed into dramatic play, where the children were encouraged to create their own play. While playing, children were exposed to such science concepts as sinking and floating, volume, sizes and shapes (of containers), wet, dry, and various degrees of those states. The children experimented with the objects in order to gather information. For example, they experimented with objects to determine which would sink and which would float. They also made predictions involving the physical properties of objects, such as when the net is full of objects, it will be heavier. All these instances were classified as engineering-related behaviors. Semi-Structured Play: Drawings, Paints and Paper Semi-structured play includes play with artifacts that, while constructed for a specific purpose, allow children a range of creativity in their usage. Examples of these artifacts include crayons, markers, pens, pencils, paper, glitter, glue, and scissors. In this study, we focused on paints and paper as examples of step-by-step play (Figures 3 and 4). Play in this context involves children handling these

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artifacts—for example stacking markers—and using these artifacts to express themselves—for example by writing or drawing. This type of play is a powerful, expressive and creative outlet for children. Figure 3. Alan painting

Figure 4. Nia and Nigel painting

There were several examples of children playing with these artifacts. The vignettes below illustrate this play, the first with an individual child who we refer to as Alan, and the second between two children referred to as Nia and Nigel.

Painting – Individual Play Alan asks for blue paint saying, ‘I need another color—blue. I am going to make orange, green and blue will make orange.’ When the teacher tells him that orange comes from mixing red and yellow, he says that he already has pink in the painting, and that is how he will make the orange. When the

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teacher tells him that the mixing pot is not working well, he abandons the brush and starts to mix with his hands. ‘It feels soft and squishy,’ he says. ‘I am using different colors, look what I did, I made a rainbow, mix, mix, mix, let’s mix.’

Alan displays both creativity and problem-solving ability. He experiments with the paints to produce a desired effect; he determines that he can make a new color of paint by mixing other paint colors together. He also identifies the physical properties of the materials when he talks to the teacher, using texture words like “soft and squishy.” He displays problem-solving skills when he uses his hands to mix the paints instead of the mixing pot.

Painting – Group Play Nia and Nigel are sprinkling salt over the paints. Nigel says, ‘you put ice on the middle, look how much I have.’ The boy then asks, ‘what will look good on the yellow?’ ‘Dots,’ says Nia. ‘Try with dots,’ she encourages Nigel. ‘What we should do next?’ asks Nia. They begin to mix colors. The teacher comes over and asks what they have painted. Nigel briefly answers that he made a fox. Nia is more descriptive saying that the dots are from an animal and that the animal goes this way then the animal is here, and she points at the opposite site of the painting. Nia continues: ‘the animal makes a nest for his brothers and sisters,’ and then she says, ‘we are kind of artists.’

In this case, the children were demonstrating an ability to make, recall, and communicate observations—all essential skills for engineering. They also described objects according to their shapes and colors and demonstrated temporal understanding by asking what should be next and tracking the progression of the animal’s movement. Nia’s explanation also demonstrates the application of prior knowledge to the current situation when she recognizes that the animal needs a nest for itself and its siblings. Structured Play: Puzzles and Snap Circuits Structured play involves the use of artifacts created with a specific use in mind. These artifacts include puzzles, board games, and snap circuits. Play in this context usually involves the handling of these materials, for example, stacking artifacts, and playing with them following a prescribed set of rules or some variation of them. Structured materials used here were puzzles and snap circuits (Figures 5 and 6).

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Figure 5. Helen and Janet making a puzzle

Figure 6. Sam playing with snap circuits

There were several examples of children playing with these artifacts, illustrated by the vignettes below. The first vignette describes a group of children playing with a puzzle, and the second, an individual child, Sam, playing with snap circuits.

Puzzles – Group Play Helen and Janet were playing with a puzzle. They are each working on separate areas of one puzzle. Helen tries to match different pieces of the puzzle trying different angles, and she talks to herself saying, ‘this goes here.’ Janet looks at the pieces first, holding some in her hands. She then tries to match a few pieces separately on the floor. Helen is still talking to herself, then she asks Janet, ‘can I see that, you think this will be here?’ Then Helen takes a piece from Janet’s part and adds it to the part she is working on. In the process, Helen says, ‘but that doesn’t fit here, here it

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matches.’ They do not leave until they complete the puzzle. In this vignette, Helen and Janet display two different approaches to problem solving. Helen observes the pieces from different angles before placing them in the larger puzzle. Janet, on the other hand, manipulates the pieces and puts them together in a separate area before assembling them into the larger puzzle. This mirrors two different approaches to manufacturing, with one approach being to build the entire artifact, and the other to build pieces and then assemble them at a later time.

Snap Circuits – Individual Play Sam plays with snap circuits and a foam base. Using the foam as a foundation for his construction, he first builds a column at one of the four ends of the foam, then builds a second column next to the first. When the second column reaches the height of the first one, he starts a third column and builds it to the same height. While building, Sam looks through the box for circuits that have the same shape. After building four columns of equal height, he counts the columns by touching the top surface of each one with his finger. He then takes another foam base with equally distributed holes and tries to place it on the top of the construction. The columns bend and he tries to straighten them with his hands. He tries again to place the foam base on top of the columns, this time holding the columns with one hand; the columns bend again. He then dismantles the pieces and returns them to the box. He plays with the last column, using it as a sword before he dismantles it and returns the pieces.

With this vignette, while displaying some understanding of shapes and gravity, Sam takes a systematic approach to construction. He demonstrates realization of the constraint according to which the columns need to be the same height to support the top piece. He also attempts to problem-solve by supporting the columns before placing the top foam base, even though he fails to find a solution. Several categories of engineering-related behavior emerged from coding the videotaped activities. Children asked questions, stated problems and displayed goal setting while engaging in the play activities. This was the case in most of the composition activities. Based on all the activities that were analyzed, 22 cases displayed a problem statement that was addressed through construction design. In another 31 cases, children expressed a goal and demonstrated it. Forty instances of problem solving were recorded. In all instances, the children were testing the solution they had in mind until they either succeeded or gave up. In 21 instances children also explained how things are built or work. We developed the following definitions to show how each of these observed behaviors corresponded to different aspects of engineering thinking (Table 1).

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Table 1. Definitions of engineering-related behaviors

Activity Categories (engineering-related behavior)

Definition

Asking Questions/ Stating Goals Child poses question in order to gather information that serves a pre-decided purpose and states what might be necessary in order to proceed with his/her constructions (object or procedure). Child is stating a goal while constructing or using artifacts.

Explaining How Things Are Built/ Work

Child explains during or at the end of his/her activity what he/she is making or what he/she has done.

Construction/ Making things Child constructs a model of something, states how to do or make something, and builds an object using pieces trying to make this object work in a certain way.

Problem Solving Child states intention to change something in order for it to work better. Child is willing to rework, redo, or redesign something in order to improve function of object or process.

Evaluating Design Child stops constructing to evaluate whether the object functions as needed or planned.

Discussion In this study, we focused on exploring child play activities that indicate early engineering thinking. We began by observing children at play and looked for actions that could be characterized as goal-directed engineering behavior. Our investigation revealed that several behaviors in which children consistently engage while playing echo engineering activities. Reflecting on our expert knowledge of engineers and the engineering process, we were able to identify examples of the following engineering-related activities described more fully in Table 1: questioning and information gathering; goal setting; problem stating; design and construction; problem solving; solution testing; replicating; and explaining or communicating results. Our analysis was a data-driven, bottom-up process without any preconceived notions of categories. We operated under certain assumptions about the relevance of play behavior to engineering thinking, namely that it is a developmental process that, however diffused, begins early and is revealed in play. We identified parallels between the observed play activities and principles of engineering. For example, our observations show that when children play with structured artifacts such as puzzles or circuits, they tend to look for a solution by modifying a part of the artifact or using a different part to create a complete “product” or “object.” This is a process similar to what a professional engineer would follow in solving a problem. Similarly, the example above of Sam’s snap circuit construction process reflects a

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phase of engineering in which engineers modify an already existing artifact to solve a problem. When the current engineering solution, used in a slightly new way, meets the need then the existing problem is usually solved. In other cases, engineers will create another artifact all together that is sometimes an extension of something they saw or worked with in the past. In our observations, we witnessed children who, while engaged in construction activities with more structured artifacts, often looked for similarities between their objects and the actual objects on which their constructions were based. Interestingly, the children in our study displayed varying degrees of involvement in these activities. Goal setting was the most common behavior we observed, followed by evaluation of design, construction, and problem solving (Table 2). The children concentrated on engineering behaviors that can be categorized as focused on the completion of production—information gathering, problem solving, and goal setting—rather than on the quality of the product—prototyping and solution testing. This would suggest that these children place a higher value on completion than on achievement. While these behaviors have tremendous value for the overall development of any young person, they are arguably central to engineering behavior, as well. Therefore, we argue that in a classroom of young children, tangible, manipulative materials can be included in lesson planning and curricular development with a STEM focus. While different children spontaneously exhibit elements of engineering-relevant dispositions, these play opportunities provide the eco-behavioral framework that permits them to emerge. Table 2. Frequencies of observations of engineering-related behaviors

Activity Categories Frequency of Observations Total Frequency

Open Semi-structured Structured

Asking Questions/Stating Goals 11 19 33 53

Explaining How Things Are Built/Work 5 7 9 21

Construction/Making Things 12 14 14 40 Problem Solving 9 12 19 40 Evaluating Design 14 14 14 42

We examined three classes of tangible artifacts: open sensorial materials, semi-structured artifacts, and structured précised artifacts. Within the eco-behavioral approach, a key consideration is whether the nature of the tangible artifact and its specific affordances affect the learning activity. Engineering lends itself to the use of structured artifacts: engineering products are often structured objects and engineering generates products with functions. The notion that young children see artifacts as existing for a function, what Keleman refers to as teleological orientation, (Keleman, Phillips and Seston, forthcoming) is relevant to engineering thinking and engineering design. Children selected what they wanted to play with at

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any time, and we can assume that their choices of artifacts were largely function-based. For example, by first manipulating the aquarium net and placing it in the water, both Matt and Zack tested the function of the materials and what could be done with water and the other objects. Thinking about how children reason about objects brought another link in our observations: artifacts and children’s creativity. In many cases, while playing with structured artifacts, children intuitively understood them in terms of their perceived purposes and functions. When playing with more open artifacts, such as sandboxes or markers used to draw on paper, children showed more exploratory behavior with regard to the functions of the objects. It is essential for engineers to use their imaginations to think of novel, creative solutions to design problems. If an engineer thinks of only one function for an artifact, it could limit his/her ability to be creative. Our observations confirmed that regardless of the kind of play artifact, in all cases children were creating things. The frequencies of observations of such engineering-related behavior were almost equally distributed through the three different environments. We can, therefore, conclude that while structured artifacts seem to have the most obvious ties to engineering, semi-structured and open tangibles are also necessary for the encouragement of exploration and creativity. While children pose questions when interacting with artifacts, they are not only interested in names/labels but also with information about the objects/materials themselves. They used their intuition about objects’ functions to distinguish and categorize them in different functional groups. Notably, when children played with structured artifacts, they asked more questions than when engaged with open artifacts, asking what the structured objects were and how they worked. Our observations show that children asked questions around three times more often when playing with puzzles and snap circuits than when exploring with sand-boxes and water tables. This early exploring and questioning are part of children’s experimenting with materials—as professional engineers often do in an attempt to increase familiarity and achieve facility with the material at hand—and are ways to enhance understanding of the problem and come up with appropriate solutions. Conclusions Engineering educators argue that to engage future engineers we have to focus on “new configurations of engineering thinking and connecting to the formative years of development” (Adams et al. 2011, 48). As Evangelou claims, developmental engineering fosters abstract thinking in developmentally appropriate ways as children gain knowledge about “the what and why and how of human-made things in custom-made ways” (Evangelou in Adams et al. 2011, 63). In order “to understand the nature of developmental engineering it is important to recognize the complexity of interactions between environment and organism” (National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (2000) as cited by Evangelou in Adams et al. 2011, 64). While more evidence is needed to understand the behavioral nuances of child play, construction, and composition with open materials and artifacts, future work should seek to clarify the relevant early engineering behaviors and their relation to eco-behavioral curricular factors, such as the teacher’s role and other structural qualities.

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The aim of the present study was to gather evidence from children’s free play with artifacts that may communicate the existence of precursors to engineering thinking. Our study demonstrates different types of interactions between children and artifacts, and indicates that artifacts do in fact facilitate children’s engagement with engineering ideas. This agrees with studies that suggest giving young children opportunities to use tangible objects and artifacts to aid understanding of abstract ideas is a developmentally appropriate way of facilitating comprehension and cognitive development. Findings from this study suggest that playgrounds, child centers, theme parks and other environments can be designed to foster early engineering behaviors. Acknowledgments The authors wish to acknowledge the generous participation of the children and families as well as the teachers for their participation in the study. Contributions by Christina Citta and Mi’chita Henson are also acknowledged. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under CAREER Grant No. 0955085. Diana Bairaktarova is a doctoral student in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. She holds BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Technical University in Sofia, Bulgaria and an MBA degree from the Hamline School of Business, Minnesota. Diana has over a decade of experience working as a Module Design Engineer. Her research interests are in the area of developmental engineering; creativity and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in early childhood; and creativity and engineering design. Diana is currently working on a research project to study the ways young children exhibit an interest in engineering in their classrooms. Demetra Evangelou, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. She obtained her B.A. in Psychology from Northeastern Illinois University, and a M.Ed. and Ph.D. in Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is a member of Sigma Xi Science Honor Society. Dr. Evangelou was awarded an NSF CAREER grant in 2009 and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2011. Dr. Evangelou’s current research focuses on developmental engineering, early childhood antecedents of engineering thinking, developmental factors in engineering pedagogy, technological literacy and human-artifact interactions. After graduating with a Diploma in Electrical and Computers Engineering and a Masters degree in Advanced Digital Communication Systems from Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece, Aikaterini (Katerina) Bagiati was in 2008 one of the first graduate students to join the pioneer School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. In 2011 she acquired her Doctorate in Engineering Education, and is currently working as a post-doctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Bagiati’s research interests are in the areas of

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