Project Grant 2602781

The National Science Foundation Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings awarded Education Development Center, Inc. (doing business as E D C) $649,574 on August 15, 2026, under the STEM Education program (CFDA 47.076) to investigate how young children develop foundational data science knowledge and reasoning during preschool.

E D C will conduct classroom teaching experiments and cognitive interviews with preschool-age children attending Head Start programs to develop and empirically validate a preschool data science learning trajectory — a developmental model describing increasingly sophisticated ways young students engage in investigations with data. The research will examine how children use foundational mathematics competencies including counting, sorting, classifying, comparing, and measurement to support their participation in data science practices: question posing, data collection, representation, interpretation, and evidence-based reasoning. The project will investigate how and under what conditions young students learn to ask questions answerable with data, collect and organize information, create different data representations, and use evidence to answer questions. Findings will inform future curriculum development, professional learning, and education policy to advance student access to data science education from the earliest years and foster data literacy and mathematical reasoning.

Performance occurs in Waltham, Massachusetts. The award obligates $649,574 with a period of performance through July 31, 2028. This is a Project Grant.