TY  - JOUR
TI  - Fostering Inquiry and Creativity in Early Years STEM Education: Policy Recommendations from the Creative Little Scientists Project
KW  - science
KW  -  mathematics
KW  -  education
KW  -  policy
KW  -  creativity
KW  -  inquiry
KW  -  early years
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.20897/ejsteme/3875
JF  - European Journal of STEM Education
AV  - public
ID  - discovery10059006
N1  - Copyright © 2018 by Author/s and Licensed by Lectito BV, Netherlands. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons
Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 3
Y1  - 2018/09/06/
A1  - Stylianidou, F
A1  - Glauert, EB
A1  - Rossis, D
A1  - Compton, A
A1  - Cremin, T
A1  - Craft, A
A1  - Havu-Nuutinen, S
N2  - 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 research, a teacher survey and classroom-based fieldwork, the research provided
insights into whether and how children?s creativity is fostered and appropriate learning outcomes, including
children?s interest, emerge. Based on these and ongoing collaboration and dialogue with participants and
other stakeholders the project proposed recommendations for policy and teacher education. This paper
presents these recommendations and the research on which they were based. Throughout the study, mixed
methods were employed, combining quantitative approaches used in surveys of policy and teachers? views
based on a list of factors, alongside qualitative approaches employed in case studies of classroom practice.
A strong conceptual framework developed at the start of the project guided data collection and analysis, as
well as the presentation of findings and the development of policy recommendations, thus ensuring the
latter?s strong and consistent relationship with the relevant theoretical knowledge, the comparative research,
analysis of classroom practices and the production of guidelines for teacher education.
IS  - 3
ER  -