Family Making and Reevaluating Beliefs About STEM and Learning

• In Event: Making at the Margins: Engaging Underserved Communities in Maker Technologies, Activities, and Spaces

Abstract

Educational making environments that are attentive to equity and how youths’ individual and social histories impact participation can offer flexible routes into STEM (Calabrese Barton, Tan, & Greenberg, 2017; Author, 2014; Author, 2015). For young children, parents are often at the center of these histories, providing access to STEM activities and shaping STEM aspirations (Archer et al., 2012). Parents’ beliefs impact children’s continued interest in STEM, with traditionally underrepresented and lower-income families showing decline in the “thinkability” of STEM participation for their children (Archer et al. 2012). This study seeks insight into how parents form and change beliefs about STEM and their children while engaged in STEM activities. Over a three-session workshop focused on family making with physical and digital materials, we analyze moments of “re-evaluation” (Blikstein, 2013): shifts in an adult or child’s conception of making, STEM, and/or their role in it.
Methods and Data Sources
Twelve families were recruited from participants in a Title 1 elementary school enrichment program in two culturally diverse areas. Each family had at least one child between 6 - 10 years old and committed to attending three consecutive two-hour Saturday workshops. Maker facilitators hosted workshops at two libraries focusing on engineering projects balancing structured instruction and open-ended making. In total, each family co-designed and built (1) an object with a functioning circuit and switch, (2) an object using a Hummingbird Arduino, and (3) an interactive game with physical and digital aspects.
Data collection included video and audio recordings of educators and families while making and semi-structured interviews with parents and children following each session. For this paper, data analysis involved examination of coded examples of “re-evaluation” moments. We then looked at the context of those shifts (verbal and physical) and how participants represented them in the interviews.
Findings
Within and across sessions, parents’ and children’s beliefs about their connections to STEM were in dynamic flow, and were reflected in comments and bids for control over the project while making, and in interviews. These “re-evaluations” sometimes aligned with Blikstein’s (2013) examples: for instance a grandmother who was hands-off in the making and laughed about “not knowing anything about all of this” came to see how her elaborate piñata construction experience gave insight into the engineering task. However we also saw re-evaluations potentially working against STEM “thinkability.” For instance, initially one mother proudly discussed a “robot” her daughter had made, but was later frustrated by her daughter’s pace and confusion while making. She showed multiple re-evaluations, including asking her daughter, “Did you even make that robot yourself?” We describe how re-evaluations emerge and evolve in relation to tasks and facilitation.
Significance
We argue that this examination of the dynamics of belief change while engaging in STEM tasks offers insight into how families, particularly those from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM, form beliefs about their children, STEM, and making. Attentiveness to how educational experiences may influence potential positive and negative re-evaluations is important for designing family educational making experiences that improve access and equity.

Authors

• Kimberly Marie Sheridan, George Mason University

• Abigail W Konopasky, George Mason University