Promoting technical process skills at preschool age through verbal-gestural modeling

• Applicant: Dr. Timo Reuter
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 493790467

According to educational frameworks of the federal states, early science and technical education aims at fostering domain-general process skills as well as the promotion of domain-specific content knowledge. Technical learning can be stimulated in preschool age through children’s active engagement with problem-based constructional tasks and guidance by kindergarten teachers. In early childhood education, modeling through language and/or gestures is considered as a way of guidance, i.e. the teacher acts as a model with regard to her verbal utterances and behavior and encourages the children to imitate her. Verbal utterances are closely linked to gestures, which can have a positive impact on learning and problem solving. To date, it has not been investigated whether technical process skills and content knowledge can be promoted through verbal and gestural modeling, how domain-general process skills and domain-specific content knowledge interact, and how children's cognitive and language skills might moderate the learning processes.To address this desideratum, a study with experimental pre-post follow-up test design with 3 experimental (EG) and one control (CG) group will be realized. The sample will consist of 200 children aged 5 to 6 years. The intervention will be conducted in a 1:1 setting of child and experimenter. Children in the EGs will initially receive instruction on technical process skills and on content knowledge about gears’ turning directions in the context of a gear construction task. In EG 1, the experimenter provides a verbal and gestural modelling of technical process skills and content knowledge; in EG 2, the experimenter provides verbal modelling only; and in EG 3, the experimenter provides a gestural modelling only. Children in the CG do not receive any instruction. After the instruction, all children work on the constructional task. The CG serves as a baseline and checks whether there is a learning effect through pure activity, i.e. working on the constructional task without prior instruction. In the pre-, post-, and follow-up tests, the children complete a content knowledge test on gears as well as the gear construction task from the intervention. In the post and follow-up test, an additional gear construction task in a context different from the intervention (transfer) will be conducted. Children’s solution processes are videotaped and technical process skills are rated with a coding scheme. Executive functions (working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility), figural reasoning, language comprehension, and mental rotation ability will be collected from each child prior to the intervention. The results should provide important insights into the extent to which language, gestures and their interaction can promote technical learning in preschool age depending on the children's individual prerequisites.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Miriam Leuchter