The Early Learning STEM Australia (ELSA) Program
A play-based program for children in preschool and foundation year to explore science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
From remote indigenous communities to regional towns and urban areas, ELSA provides all children equal opportunity to access the pedagogically rich and technologically innovative program. Since ELSA’s inception, more than 11,000 children have engaged with the program.
Discover ELSA
—with Luke Carroll
STEM-Based Program
ELSA has demonstrated a strong evidence-based curriculum over a four-year period.
The Program enables cultural and contextual learning, encouraging children to create their own content within the apps that reflects their life and community.
An RCT conducted in 2020 with 1200 children revealed significant and substantial performance gains in both STEM learning and numeracy.
See below for more info on our RCT.
Digital Apps
The ELSA apps have been designed so that children can direct their own play while building capacity in spatial and logical reasoning in STEM.
Children have the opportunity to create their own content, which is then incorporated into their subsequent app play. Children’s engagement is captured in our bespoke backend-data-analytics engine, providing an instantaneous feedback loop to educators.
Learn more about our digital apps.
Pedagogical Frameworks
ELSA is underpinned by pedagogical frameworks crafted from 20+ years of research and practice. These frameworks include STEM Practices—the ideas, methods and values of STEM—and the Experience, Represent, Apply (ERA) heuristic, which ensures app activities are balanced with classroom learning opportunities.
These pedagogical frameworks are the brainchild of Professor Tom Lowrie, who also created the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF).
Why ELSA is DIFFERENT
The ELSA Program increases children’s engagement and interest in STEM and improves their spatial reasoning and logical reasoning skills.
STEM Learning and Transfer to numeracy
In 2020, a randomised control trial (RCT), with more than 1200 children across Australia, revealed significant and substantial performance gains in both STEM learning and numeracy for those children participating in the intervention.
Results of the randomised control trial
The chart shows a relative growth in STEM learning of approximately 12% (BAU) compared to 38% (ELSA Program); and a relative increase in numeracy of approximately 28% (BAU) and 56% (ELSA Program) during the RCT.