Play Africa has developed afree, open source curriculum to promote STEM education and climate change awareness in South African learners from an early stage.
Play Africa is a children’s museum based at Constitution Hill and is active across the country’s nine provinces.
Its new curriculum, called STEM Seeds, was unveiled during a virtual launch on Friday, to coincide with International Day of Women and Girls in Science.
The curriculum is a support resource for educators and practitioners working in early childhood development (ECD), helping them build science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) skills and climate change awareness in young learners through play.
Play Africa CEO Gretchen Wilson-Prangley told ITWeb the curriculum is designed to work alongside the South African National Curriculum Framework for Children from Birth to Four and CAPS.
The ECD-focused curriculum features ready-to-use techniques and activities that educators can download, as well as a series of freely-available video tools.
It includes sections called “playful educator”, which is about building the educator’s confidence to use playful teaching methodologies to teach STEM. The “playful classroom” section allows educators to use recycled material to create a STEM centre, where each corner in the classroom is dedicated to science, technology, engineering and maths.
According to Wilson-Prangley, the target market is educators of learners aged three to six, but is still appropriate for up to age 10.
This, she believes, will support early development and school readiness; so that by the time learners enter ‘big school’, they have developed some key STEM skills.
Through its work with ECD centres across the country, Wilson-Prangley said Play Africa found communities were often resource-constrained.
“One of the things that we found is that many ECD practitioners do know that STEM is required for so many different careers; that science, technology, engineering and maths are high-growth areas that will be necessary in a changing world; and there are many ECD educators that know about climate change.
“However, when it comes to figuring out how to take these bigger concepts and apply them in an age-appropriate way through play, a lot of educators revealed they’d sometimes get stuck – they didn’t know where to start.
“When we started to create this resource, we started with educators. We went out into communities and used our Design Thinking process, to find out what they really need and how to provide that to empower them and bring STEM learning and climate change awareness through play into the classroom.
“From these interviews, we heard that educators wanted easy-to-apply, practical tips and resources that they can start applying today.
“One of the things that we heard is that some teachers felt that when it comes to STEM, they think of high-end equipment. We wanted to show educators that you don’t need expensive material to start to teach children about STEM.”
Commenting on the significance of the STEM Seeds launch on International Day of Women and Girls, Wilson-Prangley said it underscores the importance of empowering girls by promoting gender equity in STEM education and careers.
“If we want to equip South Africa’s children for the future, we need to support the creativity and resourcefulness of our country’s early educators.
“This curriculum support for early educators can help children develop new capacities for deeper learning, critical thinking and creative problem-solving through playful learning.”
“Our objective is to help South Africa’s early educators, from all backgrounds and education levels, build the confidence they need to use playful approaches to introduce STEM and climate change awareness in classrooms across the country,” added Rachel Fowkes, programme manager for STEM Seeds at Play Africa.
“Now everyone can help encourage the next generation of South African scientists, coders, engineers, mathematicians and inventors.”
Wilson-Prangley concluded: “Our hope is that this is a locally-relevant resource that is embraced and celebrated by ECD practitioners and becomes a real tool to help them to enliven and enrich their classroom experience. We think that is the transformation we need to see today, to be able to develop the scientists of tomorrow.”
Share