In recent years, there have been growing calls to include STEM education in early childhood (EC). This has created new challenges for EC teachers as they try to find ways to integrate STEM content and pedagogical strategies into school-based curricula. This study interviewed 24 EC teachers to understand their roles in implementing STEM education in preschool classrooms. The qualitative interviews explored changes in teachers’ roles and challenges before and after integrating STEM-related activities. The study revealed that the STEM education process is a dynamic one, and that the role of EC teachers is changing from one delivering teacher-centered knowledge to one fostering STEM-related learning in children. The research findings indicate that EC teachers face various challenges when implementing STEM education. The transformation of the teacher’s role during STEM classroom practices when encountering a range of challenges is discussed.

In recent years, calls have been made globally to strengthen early childhood Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education, with proponents arguing that STEM education boosts children's later STEM-related achievements in contextual learning environments. Appropriate pedagogy has been considered a significant medium to bridge the curriculum framework and effective teaching and learning practices. To ensure the effectiveness of the pedagogical approach in early STEM education, we have to address the potential for enacting child-centered experiential experiences in specific cultural contexts. However, it has been found that early childhood educators in Hong Kong lack localized pedagogies to deliver STEM education effectively. This chapter proposes a culturally situated approach to support Hong Kong's early educators in finding an efficient way to glocalize the global pedagogical approach in early STEM education. Following the three-component framework proposed by Chen (2022), this culturally situated approach takes the middle ground to harmonize globally practical pedagogical approaches with teaching challenges in local contexts. Underpinned by the sensemaking processes to connect the “Nature and Living” learning area (Curriculum Development Council, 2017) to Hong Kong's regional context, this approach encourages teachers to engage children in STEM exploration in the local natural environment. It transforms the process of children's learning in STEM from one of knowledge delivery to one of knowledge co-creation. It also helps to redefine the roles of children and educators in a STEM learning context that integrates young children's experiences in exploring nearby nature and living. To identify the nuances of practical teaching and learning practices within this pedagogy, four case vignettes were captured from the activities focused on the themes of nature exploration and cooperation with nearby communities and the natural environment in a large-scale STEM project. In the selected case, educators and children co-created STEM knowledge through continuous sensemaking learning activities, including (1) sensing and finding a gap, (2) investigating, (3) making meaning, and (4) sharing periodic outcomes of the sensemaking process. During the learning process, children explore ideas by connecting nature, sorting and organizing collected information, and identifying and correlating abstract concepts with the process of sensemaking. The four cases demonstrate how early educators use culturally situated pedagogies to localize the global STEM systematic pedagogical framework to support preschoolers in building STEM sensemaking in the Hong Kong context. The study also implies the potential of the culturally situated pedagogy in reconceptualizing the culture of STEM learning.