Circumventing the leaky STEM pipeline starting with early childhood educators

Abstract

STEM is at the forefront of educational discourse, policy, and guidelines leading to growing STEM demands in early childhood education (ECE) curricula and praxis. This, in part, is to counteract the loss of women through the leaky STEM pipeline. This process sees girls and women disengage from STEM at consecutive stages throughout their educational journey. ECE provides a singular opportunity to introduce STEM early, and to disrupt the development of gendered STEM stereotypes. Yet, the largely female ECE workforce and limited provision of STEM in their preservice education often leaves this potential unrealized. This paper explores ECE educators’ preservice experience of engaging with Makerspace workshops as part of their undergraduate degree. Questionnaires and interviews explored educators’ perceptions of gender and STEM, and the impact of Makerspaces on their own STEM learning and self-efficacy. Findings indicate that participation in Makerspaces has positive impacts on STEM skills, knowledge, confidence, and plans to enact STEM learning. The impact of educators’ own gender in STEM engagement and their role in modeling STEM for young children was explored. Implications for preservice education and countering the leaky pipeline are discussed.