Readiness of State-, Private- and Church-Run Kindergartens to Use STEM Education

Abstract

Between 2022 and 2023, the authors conducted a nationwide survey of kindergarten teachers across all regions of Slovakia to analyse their readiness to implement STEM education into early childhood activities. The representative sample of randomly selected respondents included an appropriate distribution of state, private, and church-run kindergartens. This article presents key findings from a comparative analysis of teacher readiness across these different school types. Specifically, the findings relate to three survey items: the lack of information regarding STEM as a possible barrier to implementation; teachers' responses to the statement: "I find it difficult to explain why and how STEM experiments work"; and the self-assessed adequacy of their knowledge within individual STEM areas.