From Curiosity to Care: Early Childhood Science, STEM, and Sustainability Education
A special issue of Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102). This special issue belongs to the section "Early Childhood Education".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 729
Editors
Interests: science education; climate change education; STEM education
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
(1) Issue Introduction—Background and Importance
Early childhood is a pivotal period for developing how children notice phenomena, explain causes, use evidence, and care for places and communities. As environmental and sustainability challenges become more visible in daily life, early science and STEM experiences can cultivate systems thinking, critical information use, and action competence while supporting equitable participation. This Special Issue foregrounds the arc from curiosity to care—linking playful inquiry to reasoning and, where appropriate, age‑appropriate stewardship and community connections.
(2) Aim and Scope
This Special Issue invites research and design that advances science and STEM learning in early childhood with explicit connections to environmental and sustainability education. We welcome empirical studies (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods), design‑based research, conceptual/theoretical syntheses, and practitioner–researcher design cases. Submissions should make claims accessible to an interdisciplinary readership; report context and participants clearly; attend to equity, inclusion, accessibility (UDL), and ethical practice (including Indigenous and place/land‑responsive approaches where relevant); and, when possible, share materials/instruments that support reuse.
(3) Suggested Themes
- Early epistemic cognition and metacognition in science learning;
- Representations as thinking tools (drawings, models, data displays, and gesture);
- Play‑based and guided‑play inquiry; outdoor/nature‑rich and community settings;
- Systems thinking and age‑appropriate sustainability concepts (interdependence, cycles, and change over time);
- Socioscientific reasoning and critical information literacy (credibility, source tracing, and audience‑aware communication);
- Equity‑centred, culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogy; UDL/accessibility;
- Indigenous and place/land‑responsive science education; reciprocity and data governance;
- Family–school–community partnerships; museums and informal learning;
- Assessment of early science/STEM (performance tasks, learning trajectories, and validity/trustworthiness);
- Teacher education and professional learning for the early years (designs, noticing, scaffolding, and knowledge mobilization).
We look forward hearing from you and advancing scholarship and practice that move young learners from curiosity to care.
Dr. Qingna Jin
Dr. Melissa Bishop
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- early childhood science education
- STEM
- environmental education
- sustainability education
- play-based learning
- teacher education
- place/land-based
- equity
- accessibility
- community partnerships
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