Capturing the world with verbs: Preschool science education beyond nouns and objects

The study investigates how the use of everyday verbs instead of nouns can create new opportunities for learning science in kindergarten.

The results show that the use of verbs in science teaching triggers a shift from an object-oriented way of seeing the world to noticing non-tangible processes and phenomena in the children’s own surroundings. The researcher believes that the verbs highlight the potential scientific learning in a way that facilitates a type of kindergarten pedagogy that goes beyond a distinction between subjective/objective and concrete/abstract.

The data material consists of transcripts from six project meetings between the researcher and kindergarten teachers. The kindergarten teachers had previously participated in a research project with the goal of developing pedagogical models and materials to support the teaching of science in kindergarten. The researcher analyses verb-based learning activities in science. The learning activities were taken from the kindergarten teachers’ science teaching experiences (memories, photos and video recordings).

Areljung, S. (2020). “Capturing the world with verbs: Preschool science education beyond nouns and objects”. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 2020, 21(1):70-82.