Data Modeling With Young Learners and Their Families

• In Event: 21.056 - Creating a Diverse and Data-Capable Workforce Through Innovative STEM Programs

Abstract

Young children need opportunities to discover that mathematical thinking is a powerful tool for organizing their explorations of the world around them, supporting arguments and driving discovery. These early explorations can lay the groundwork for later studies, as they orient children toward understanding numbers as data that represent something specific in the world that they are seeking to understand. This association of number with phenomena is central to engaging successfully with data analytic concepts and with the role of mathematical thinking in the STEM professions more broadly. The goal of this project is to design, implement and study a six-week family workshop series that engages young children (5-8 years old) and their caregivers and siblings in playful, exploratory data modeling experiences in an informal STEM learning environment.
The project is grounded in a theoretical framework that draws on prior work by Leona Schauble and Rich Lehrer and by Herb Ginsberg and his colleagues, who have demonstrated that young children are capable of sophisticated reasoning about data, and of using inferences drawn from data to inform their responses to problems that are meaningful to them. The workshop is framed as an opportunity to learn about exhibition design in a science center, and to collect data about key features of exhibits on the floor of the science center, which then drives children’s choices as they design a mock-up of an exhibit that they think would make the science center a better place.

Methods used in this study include coding of video recordings of family talk and behaviors during the workshops; brief demographic surveys; and interviews with both children and their caretakers. We are triangulating our data sources to seek to understand a) whether the workshops are able to support sustained mathematical activity and discussion among family groups; b) whether and how children’s projects are informed by the data they collected and the inferences the group drew from those data; and c) the various strategies parents used to support their children’s activity and encourage the use of mathematical strategies. All workshop participants wore lapel microphones during each session, and workshop activities were videotaped.

This research will contribute to both the literature on family math learning and to practice in institutions that support informal STEM learning programs. Because the research is being conducted with multi-lingual family groups (Spanish, Mandarin and English), it is one of the few studies of family mathematics learning that includes consideration of the learning experiences of non-native English speaking children in multi-lingual environments. It also provides a proof of concept of a sustained workshop series as a format that can engage families in mathematics activities together in a setting that they perceive to be welcoming and where children can feel successful.

Authors

• ChangChia James Liu, New York Hall of Science

• Katherine McMillan Culp, New York Hall of Science