What Does a Curious Student Look Like? Investigating the Connection Between Curiosity and Making Practices

• In Event: Making the Future: Addressing Critiques, Transitions, and New Challenges in Maker Education

Abstract

Objectives and Framework: This research investigates youth’s science curiosity while making artifacts in an after-school STEM Making program at a rural and urban upper-elementary schools in Michigan. Although the Maker Movement has emphasized the importance of both making practices and the maker mindset (Doughterty, 2013) as well as connecting them to practice (Chu, Quek, Bhangaonkar, Ging, & Sridharamurthy, 2015), curiosity, and specifically science curiosity, has yet to be explored within the context of making. The goal of this poster is to examine the relationship between the youths’ making practices and science curiosity.

As curiosity is an important aspect of learning (Markey & Loewenstein, 2014), research has begun to focus on how to evaluate various aspects of it (Engel, 2011; Jirout and Klahr, 2012; Luce and Hsi, 2014; Spektor-Levy, Baruch, and Mevarech, 2013). The Authori and colleague (2016) developed a 12-item, psychometrically validated science curiosity scale in which multiple items were related to making (i.e., building, inventing, mixing, solving challenging problems). In this study, I use comparative case studies to examine youth’s making practices and artifacts and conversations between youth in afterschool STEM making programs in order to explore the relationships between science curiosity and making.

Methods and data sources: Through afterschool STEM Making programs in two upper elementary schools in rural and urban Michigan, we observed 43 youth aged 9-12 during a total of eight, 2-hour after-school programs as they participated in a variety of making experiences. Data include: video-records and fieldnotes of the eight making sessions, photographs of created artifacts, curiosity scale scores, and student interviews. The unit of analysis is one individual or collaborative making episode; each student participated in between one and three episodes per making session. For this poster, the making episodes of three groups of students within one after-school STEM making program were qualitatively coded with an analytical framework of curious talk and actions (Authorsi, 2016; Spektor-Levy, Baruch, and Mevarech, 2013). For this poster, I use case studies of three groups of youth, scoring high, median, and low on the curiosity scale, to examine the behaviors and talk while making.

Results: Initial findings indicate that curious talk and actions while making differ for youth with different curiosity scale scores. Youth with higher scores show more cognitive actions and talk and demonstrate evidence of more making practices, as well as more emotional and sensomotoric behaviors. Finally, several high scoring youth had more design iterations when working individually versus collaboratively. They also asked less curious questions and offered fewer suggestions than when working individually. Youth with lower scores displayed fewer cognitive engagement behaviors, selected fewer supplies, and desired acknowledgement for personal reasons or attributes, as well as demonstrating fewer behaviors related to making practices. Further analysis on curiosity and making as well as the impact of collaborative work on curiosity and making practices is needed.
Significance: Implications of this research are the elucidation of the role of science curiosity within making practices to better support learners and impact their curiosity about science through meaningful making experiences.

Authors

• Jennifer Lynn Weible, Central Michigan University

• Madeline Burgin, Central Michigan University