Families’ Social and Material Scaffolding for Learning in Museums

• In Event: Toward a Refined Understanding of Social and Material Scaffolds in STEM Education

Abstract

Objectives
This study investigates families’ interpretive and discourse practices they scaffold science learning within the designed setting of museums. Satisfactory achievement in the informal, designed learning setting of a museum is formed from a combination of material artifact displays developed by curators and the interpersonal social mediation of the museum visitors. Material scaffolds work to focus a learner’s attention or maintain the direction of an activity, even as the social group models appropriate interaction (Pea, 2004; Gauvain, 2001), although the task orientations and learning outcomes are given over to the learners themselves. How families work together in a science center has been explored for decades, but this study aims to understand how families scaffold science learning across museums oriented to various purposes.

Conceptual Framework
We draw on Pea’s (2004) description of the scaffolding with fading and scaffolding with “person-as-model.” Like Pea, we consider the learning supports of Vygotsky’s ZPD to consist of the technological and social, forming two axes: technological designed artifacts, and human responsiveness and resources to meet needs of the learner. As a human model, Pea writes, “for...conceptual development...the social conception of between-people scaffolding and support for learning is not primarily about the uses of technological artifacts but about social practices that have arisen over millenia in parenting and other forms of caring” (p. 429).

Methods
Excerpted from a broader, multi-year ethnographic study to understand how children learn science across the places in their lives, the families that make up these cases visited at least two science centers, aquarium, zoos, art museums, etc. while accompanied by the researchers. From “Granite Hills”, a multi-lingual, multi-cultural neighborhood in a large urban city in the Pacific Northwest, the youth in the study were in the 4th or 5th grades. Data consists of video and audio recordings of observations and interviews, digital photographs and field notes.

Findings
Findings show that families structured their own interpretations and activities in response to provided material supports with varying expectations for learning across museum institutions and programs. Social supports included patterned family discourse (e.g., argumentation) drawing on shared prior experiences that encouraged persistence in the face of challenge, guided the use of language, and helped decode procedures and information provided through the material supports, including physical manipulatives.

Scholarly Significance
Findings from this study can be used to inform the design of museum and other informal, designed learning environments through an improved understanding of how small family groups understand appropriate use, outcomes, and adjust learning supports according to children’s development.

Authors

• Suzanne Perin, University of Washington

• Leah A. Bricker, University of Michigan