Asking for too much too early? Promoting mechanistic reasoning in early childhood science and mathematics education

Following research attention to children's use and understanding of causation, in this paper we contend that young children as early as kindergarten are able to engage in an effort to develop understanding about the causal mechanism underlying or explaining physical and mathematical phenomena. We draw on a two examples from early childhood education settings to suggest that children are able to use (novice) abilities of mechanistic reasoning both in early science and mathematics education. We discuss implications for the role of the teacher and activity design.