The research team, led by Goutam Roy of Charles Sturt University together with colleagues Shukla Sikder and Will Letts, set out to address a gap that has long been acknowledged but rarely examined directly. While numerous studies have documented the importance of building scientific literacy in the early years and its long-term benefits, few have asked what happens after the initial spark: how children move from developing an understanding of scientific ideas to genuinely retaining and extending that understanding across contexts. The authors define scientific literacy as a combination of acquiring scientific knowledge, establishing connections with the real world, and applying that knowledge in similar or new situations, a framing that aligns with what scholars call Vision 2 of scientific literacy, which emphasises applicability in daily life rather than purely academic science content.

To investigate the process, the researchers adopted a qualitative design grounded in cultural-historical theory, using digital video observation to capture the full texture of children’s play. The study took place at an early childhood centre in the central west region of New South Wales, Australia, where four educators and 22 children aged four to five participated. Before any filming began, the team held a one-hour professional development session with educators and the centre director to discuss the study’s aims, relevant scientific concepts, and how educators might support children’s learning through play. Over a two-week period, three cameras documented a series of colour-focused play activities, generating more than nine and a half hours of video footage across three sessions lasting just over three hours and twenty minutes in total.

The three play experiences were deliberately sequenced to build on one another. In the first activity, children mixed liquid and ice-block colours at a table while educators asked open-ended questions about what would happen when one colour was added to another. Children discovered, for example, that adding red to an existing green produced what one child memorably called a ‘yucky colour’, and educators extended the conversation by inviting children to draw rainbows and think about where rainbow colours come from. The researchers interpret this stage as the establishment of an initial scientific literacy: children acquired knowledge of colour mixing and immediately applied it in a hands-on situation, linking what Vygotsky termed everyday concepts with the beginnings of scientific understanding.

The second day pushed the children’s knowledge into new territory through two experiments. First, children cut stalks of celery and placed them in coloured water, observing how the vegetable absorbed the dye and changed colour, an everyday application of the previous day’s learning. Then an educator attempted something more ambitious: creating a real rainbow using only a spray bottle of plain water and sunlight. The children were asked how many colours a rainbow contains and whether it could be made without dyes. Despite several attempts, including moving to a higher position, no rainbow appeared. The researchers argue that this failure was itself pedagogically valuable. The educator connected the disappointment back to the concept by naming the rainbow’s colours and singing a rainbow song with the children, demonstrating that unsuccessful experiments can still deepen curiosity, imagination, and reasoning when educators explain the underlying process.

The third activity transformed the children’s knowledge once more by changing the state of an object. Working with corn flour, liquid colours, and water, children created mixtures ranging from thin to thick, deciding for themselves whether to add more flour or more water. Crucially, the educator did not prescribe instructions but instead asked children what they wanted to do, prompting them to reason about cause and effect: adding corn flour made the mixture thicker, while adding water thinned it. The researchers observed children drawing on their earlier learning about colour mixing, applying it to a new material, and making informed decisions about proportions. This, they argue, is the hallmark of sustaining scientific literacy: the ability to apply scientific reasoning across related contexts, revisiting prior knowledge and generating new explanations.

From the analysis, conducted using the dialectical-interactive approach developed by Hedegaard and Fleer across three interpretive levels, the team distilled a four-stage continuous process for sustaining scientific literacy: planned play-based scientific experiences, initial scientific literacy, continuation, and sustaining scientific literacy. In the first stage, educators design a series of connected activities aligned with specific science concepts and children’s interests. In the second, children acquire knowledge and apply it practically, as with the colour mixing. The continuation stage involves interrelated problem-solving tasks that link previous knowledge to new applications, such as the celery and rainbow experiments. Finally, sustaining scientific literacy emerges as children consciously apply their understanding in progressively more advanced situations, using critical thinking and decision-making. The process depends on educators acting as play partners who scaffold learning through questions, prompts, and shared dialogue, consistent with the Australian Early Years Learning Framework’s emphasis on planned, intentional teaching through play.

The theoretical engine driving this process is Vygotsky’s account of the relationship between everyday and scientific concepts. Vygotsky argued that children’s everyday concepts form the foundation of their scientific concepts, and that scientific concepts in turn restructure and elevate everyday concepts, writing that scientific concepts ‘are not learned in final form—they too develop.’ The study’s authors apply this insight to scientific literacy, suggesting that isolated, one-off science play experiences are insufficient to sustain it. Instead, scientific ways of thinking, knowing, and applying knowledge must be revisited and transformed across a series of related experiences, allowing children to build conscious awareness of concepts they initially engage with only implicitly. When educators make these connections explicit through carefully planned play, children progress toward higher-order skills such as problem-solving, analytical competence, and the socio-scientific decision-making that scholars like Holbrook and Rannikmae and Johnson identify as the ultimate aims of scientific literacy.

The authors are candid about the practical challenges of implementing their framework. The four-stage process depends on educators’ willingness and intentionality, and some may feel uncertain about their own scientific knowledge, lacking the confidence to guide children from developing to sustaining scientific literacy. The researchers stress that educators do not need to be science content experts; the emphasis falls on planning, organising, engaging, describing, and questioning to prompt children’s higher-level understanding. They also caution that pedagogical responsiveness cannot be assumed across all early childhood contexts without adequate policy support and professional development, and that cultural differences in orientations toward co-constructed learning may require the process to be adapted locally rather than applied as a uniform pathway.

The study’s implications reach beyond the preschool classroom. Because scientific literacy underpins informed citizenship, the ability to evaluate evidence, and engagement with complex socio-scientific issues later in life, ensuring that early gains endure is arguably as important as producing them. The researchers suggest that future work should examine how the process can be negotiated across diverse settings, how structural and policy supports can help educators sustain children’s scientific literacy, and whether interdisciplinary approaches could strengthen the framework. For now, the humble act of mixing colours, feeding celery dyed water, and chasing an elusive rainbow offers a compelling demonstration that sustained scientific literacy can begin not with formal lessons, but with play, guided by educators who know when to step in and when to let children lead.

Subject of Research: How educators can support children in sustaining scientific literacy through play-based experiences in the early years.

Article Title: Sustaining Scientific Literacy Among Children Through Play In The Early Years: A Cultural-Historical View

Article References: Roy, G., Sikder, S., & Letts, W. (2026). Sustaining Scientific Literacy Among Children Through Play In The Early Years: A Cultural-Historical View. Early Childhood Education Journal. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-026-02322-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10643-026-02322-5

Keywords: scientific literacy, early childhood education, play-based learning, cultural-historical theory, Vygotsky, preschool science, educators, STEM education, everyday concepts, scientific concepts, video observation, Australia