Expanding Views of Science in a Science Night Inquiry Program for Dual Language Families

• In Event: Expanding Participation in Science and Technology Learning Through Novel Designs for Family Science Nights

Abstract

Objectives: Families are an important focus in efforts to make science learning accessible and equitable, but many parents do not engage their children in scientific sensemaking discussions and when they do they may not recognize their conversations as scientific. Parents may not view science as something they are capable of or qualified to do, which can be driven by language barriers: science has a specific and complicated vocabulary, and most science learning in the U.S. is conducted in English-only environments. We designed an inquiry-based workshop series for families, with an explicit focus of expanding parents’ notions of what counts as science learning and who can participate.
Theoretical Framework: We took a resources view of learning in which families use their linguistic and cognitive resources to construct their own understandings, rather than the dominant deficit view in which learners have robust misconceptions that must be confronted and replaced (Hammer et al., 2005; Warren et al., 2001). We used everyday materials and tied inquiry discussions to local contexts (e.g. a strange looking tree at the school), supporting families to draw upon their funds of knowledge (González et al., 2005).
Method, Data Sources, and Results: We engaged families in an inquiry-based evening science program at several ethnically and linguistically diverse elementary schools. They observed mysterious phenomena using everyday materials and we supported them in collaboratively constructing their own explanations. Sessions were conducted bilingually, with translation in real-time, which helped families engage with science in their own terms.
We found that some parents felt this experience was different from others they’ve had and felt more confident to engage in science. For example, after a session with several inquiry activities using Slinky toys, a mother said in Spanish:
“I used to say that science was something extraordinary, that could not be understood. But it is something that… you can see, you can do. For me it used to be something…aah…that I did not understand. But when I came last week I said, wow! Then science is something you can do easily and simply and without study.”
To understand how our approach may have contributed to these shifts, we conducted an interaction analysis of the video-recorded workshops and we focus on three episodes during an ice melting activity.
1. A father uses information he heard in the media (melting ice bergs cause sea levels to rise) to explain one of three possible outcomes in an experiment.
2. A father makes reference to a Spanish pop song that is directly relevant to the phenomenon at hand.
3. A mother uses her own words to describe a phenomenon, which gets identified as “displacement.”

Significance: We argue that several elements of the design helped these moments unfold: 1) a focus on everyday materials and phenomena with which people have extensive experience, 2) a resources-based perspective in which we encouraged people to draw upon their lived experiences, 3) bilingual translation so English-primary and Spanish-primary families could engage together, and 4) in-the-moment marking of their reasoning as “scientific.”

Authors

• Megan R. Luce, Stanford University

• Luke David Conlin, Stanford University

• Tanner Vea, Stanford University