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Impact of guided STEM challenges on critical thinking and scientific reasoning in the Early Years.

This study demonstrates that incorporating guided questioning into structured LEGO-based STEM tasks significantly enhances critical thinking, scientific reasoning, and problem-solving skills in 5- to 6-year-old children, effectively bridging the gap between play-based early years learning and more structured school curricula.

Original authors: Leanne Joy Shay, Rachel Takriti, Ahmad Qablan, Lise Westaway

Published 2026-07-08

📖 4 min read☕ Coffee break read

CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Leanne Joy Shay, Rachel Takriti, Ahmad Qablan, Lise Westaway

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

Imagine a child's mind as a garden. In the earliest years (Early Years Foundation Stage), this garden is a wild, beautiful place where kids run around, dig in the dirt, and follow their curiosity wherever it leads. They learn by playing freely. But as they move into "Year 1" (the first year of formal school), the garden gets fenced in. The curriculum becomes more like a strict construction site with blueprints, rules, and specific goals.

The problem is that this sudden shift from "wild play" to "strict building" can sometimes cause kids to lose their spark for asking "Why?" and "What if?" This is especially tricky in places like the UAE, where classrooms are full of children from many different countries and languages.

The Experiment: Building with LEGO
To see how to keep that spark alive during this transition, researchers Leanne Shay and her team at the United Arab Emirates University set up a four-week experiment with 39 children (ages 5 and 6). They used LEGO bricks to build two things: a seesaw and a marble maze.

They split the kids into two teams:

The "Free Play" Team (Control Group): These kids were told, "Here are some LEGOs, build a seesaw and a marble maze." They were left to figure it out on their own.
The "Guided" Team (Intervention Group): These kids got the same task, but a teacher walked around asking them specific, open-ended questions like, "What do you think will happen if you move this piece?" or "Why did the marble fall off?"

What Happened? The "Flat" vs. The "House"
The results were like night and day, and the researchers used some great examples to show why.

The Free Play Team: These kids were enthusiastic and fast. They built their structures quickly and often said, "I'm done!" However, their creations were often flat and simple. When they tried to make a marble maze, they just made a flat platform. The marble rolled right off because there were no walls or tracks to guide it. They treated the task like a race to finish, not a puzzle to solve. They didn't really think about why their design failed; they just moved on.
The Guided Team: These kids took longer, but they built something amazing. One group built a "house maze" with multiple levels, walls, and even a little lamp. When their structure was wobbly, they didn't give up; they added more pieces to fix it. When asked "Why did it fall?", they thought about the balance and the middle point (the fulcrum) and fixed it.

The "Scaffolding" Metaphor
Think of the teacher's questions as scaffolding (the temporary metal poles builders use to help construct a tall building).

Without scaffolding (the Free Play group), the kids tried to build a tower but kept hitting a ceiling of their own understanding. They could see the bricks, but they didn't know how to stack them to reach higher thinking.
With scaffolding (the Guided group), the teacher's questions acted as the poles. They didn't build the tower for the kids, but they gave the kids something to stand on so they could reach higher. The questions helped the children move from just looking at the blocks to thinking about how the blocks work together.

The Key Findings
The study found that while both groups could see what was happening (observation), only the Guided group learned how to:

Guess what would happen next (Hypothesis).
Test their ideas (Testing).
Think about what went wrong and fix it (Reflection).
Keep trying when things got hard (Persistence).

The researchers concluded that in the tricky transition from "playtime" to "school time," simply letting kids play isn't enough to teach them how to think like scientists. They need a little help from an adult who asks the right questions to unlock their brain's problem-solving power. This is especially helpful for children learning English as a second language, as the questions give them a way to talk about their ideas and understand the concepts better.

In short: Play is great, but play with a little bit of "thinking questions" from a teacher turns a fun activity into a powerful learning experience.

Technical Summary: Impact of Guided STEM Challenges on Critical Thinking and Scientific Reasoning in the Early Years

Problem Statement
The transition from the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) to Year 1 within the UK National Curriculum framework represents a significant pedagogical shift. While EYFS emphasizes flexible, curiosity-driven, and play-based exploration, Year 1 introduces a more structured, subject-specific curriculum prioritizing measurable academic outcomes. This shift often reduces opportunities for open-ended, inquiry-based learning, particularly in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Consequently, children may struggle to develop the critical thinking and scientific reasoning skills necessary for advanced STEM learning. This challenge is compounded in multicultural, multilingual educational contexts, such as international schools in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where diverse linguistic backgrounds (including English as an Additional Language learners) and cultural adaptations create additional hurdles for inclusive inquiry-based instruction. The study addresses the gap in understanding how structured STEM challenges, specifically those enhanced with adult-guided questioning, can support the development of critical thinking and scientific reasoning during this critical transitional phase.

Methodology
The study employed a quasi-experimental, mixed-methods design to compare the effects of guided versus unstructured STEM tasks on 39 children (25 boys, 14 girls) aged 5 to 6 years. Participants were enrolled in a multicultural British international primary school in Al Ain, UAE, and were randomly assigned to either an intervention group or a control group.

Procedure: Over a four-week period, all children engaged in hands-on LEGO-based STEM tasks: building a seesaw and designing a marble maze.
Intervention Group: Children received open-ended, guiding questions from an adult facilitator during the tasks (e.g., "Why do you think that didn't work?" or "What might happen if you move this piece?"). These questions were designed to prompt reflection, prediction, and design iteration.
Control Group: Children completed the identical tasks without adult questioning or guidance beyond the initial instruction, allowing for independent exploration.
Measures: A structured observational tool was utilized to evaluate six core dimensions of scientific thinking: observation, questioning, hypothesis formulation, testing/experimentation, reflection/analysis, and persistence/engagement. Each dimension was scored using a 5-point Likert scale based on behavioral indicators. Internal consistency for the scale was high (Cronbach's alpha = .92). Data collection included audio recordings, field notes, and quantitative scoring.

Key Results
Quantitative analysis using independent samples t-tests revealed statistically significant differences between the two groups in favor of the intervention group.

Overall Performance: The intervention group achieved significantly higher scores on the composite Science scale compared to the control group ( $t(37) = 8.90, p < 0.001$ ).
Subscale Differences: Significant improvements were observed in the intervention group across all subscales except for "Observation," which showed no statistically significant difference ( $p > 0.05$ $p > 0.05$ ). The intervention group demonstrated superior performance in:
- Questioning: $t = 2.88, p < 0.01$
- Hypothesis Formulation: $t = 6.06, p < 0.001$
- Testing/Experimentation: $t = 8.11, p < 0.001$
- Reflection/Analysis: $t = 9.16, p < 0.001$
- Persistence: $t = 5.52, p < 0.001$
- Engagement: $t = 4.60, p < 0.001$
Qualitative Observations:
- Control Group: Children often completed tasks rapidly, associating speed with success. Their engagement was driven by prior knowledge and instinct, resulting in surface-level exploration. Designs were often structurally unsound (e.g., flat marble runs without barriers), and children rarely generated hypotheses or revised strategies after failure.
- Intervention Group: Guided questioning facilitated a shift from passive participation to active inquiry. Children verbalized reasoning, iterated on designs (e.g., reinforcing unstable structures), and integrated narrative elements into their engineering tasks. They demonstrated the ability to identify causal relationships (e.g., fulcrum placement on a seesaw) and persist through challenges.

Key Contributions
The study provides empirical evidence that structured STEM challenges supported by adult-guided questioning significantly enhance critical thinking and scientific reasoning in 5- to 6-year-olds. Specifically, the research demonstrates that:

Scaffolding Inquiry: Guided questions effectively scaffold learning, helping children transition from exploratory play to systematic reasoning and hypothesis testing.
Bridging Curricular Transitions: Guided STEM tasks serve as a viable pedagogical bridge between the play-based EYFS and the structured Year 1 curriculum, maintaining inquiry opportunities while meeting academic expectations.
Multicultural Applicability: The approach is effective in diverse, multilingual classrooms, offering a scaffold that supports both cognitive engagement and expressive language use for EAL learners.
Differentiation of Skills: While basic observation skills are present in both groups, guided questioning is the critical factor that enables children to utilize observations for higher-order thinking, such as reflection and problem-solving.

Significance and Claims
The authors claim that guided questioning is not merely a teaching technique but a transformative cognitive tool. The study suggests that adult-facilitated questioning transforms passive participation into active inquiry, fostering persistence, reflection, and problem-solving skills essential for lifelong learning.

The paper posits that while unstructured play nurtures creativity, it often lacks the focus and scaffolding required to build systematic reasoning skills. Conversely, the study highlights that motivation alone is insufficient for deep cognitive growth in STEM; intentional adult interaction is necessary to guide children toward deeper scientific processes. The findings support the integration of structured inquiry into early STEM education, particularly during the EYFS-to-Year 1 transition, to ensure continuity in the development of scientific reasoning. The authors conclude that such approaches offer an inclusive strategy to support diverse learners, preparing them for future academic and professional pursuits in a STEM-driven world.

Technical Summary: Impact of Guided STEM Challenges on Critical Thinking and Scientific Reasoning in the Early Years

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