Scientific agency in preschool STEM: a play-based developmental model

Early childhood STEM is often justified through future achievement or described through activities and materials, yet these accounts do not fully explain how playful exploration becomes child-authored inquiry. This article develops a conceptual account of scientific agency in preschool STEM: a young child’s situated capacity to influence how a phenomenon is questioned, investigated, interpreted, and revisited with others. The argument addresses a gap in activity-centered and outcome-oriented accounts of early STEM, which often document exposure, engagement, or intervention effects without specifying when hands-on experience becomes epistemic participation. The proposed Play-Based STEM Agency Model is a theoretically derived framework rather than the result of a single empirical intervention. It synthesizes early childhood pedagogy, constructivist and sociocultural learning theory, curiosity research, embodied cognition, and science education work on inquiry practices. The model proposes a recursive pathway in which play-based STEM inquiry creates accessible uncertainty; uncertainty invites epistemic curiosity; embodied investigation makes ideas testable through action and material feedback; and meaning-making connects experience with comparison, representation, explanation, and revision. Scientific agency emerges when children’s contributions shape the direction of inquiry and are recognized by teachers and peers. By specifying mechanisms, moderators, and boundary conditions, the model generates testable hypotheses and offers process-sensitive indicators for research, teacher education, and assessment in preschool STEM.