Bridging Informal Learning Environments and Home: How Parents and Children Use Smartphone-Created Digital Artifacts for Science Learning After an Aquarium Visit

• In Event: Digital Practices for Promoting Children's STEM Learning in Informal Settings

Abstract

Objectives and Theoretical Framework: Family conversations promote children’s science learning while visiting informal learning environments (ILE) (Crowley & Callanan, 1998; Haden, 2010). Within the sociocultural perspective (Vygotsky, 1978), family conversations during and after events impact what the child learns, remembers, and recalls (Ornstein et al., 2004). Yet, little is known about the mechanisms that bridge children’s learning across settings (e.g., from aquarium to home).

Cultural tools, including language and technologies, mediate knowledge construction within social interactions (Wertsch, 1998) and across learning ecologies (Meyers et al., 2013). Thus, family conversations and smartphones may be tools that connect children’s learning across ILE (Haden et al., 2021; Ocular et al., 2022). Families commonly use smartphones to create artifacts (e.g., photos and videos) during informal learning experiences (Kelly et al., 2020), and such technologies enhance thinking capacities (e.g., Salomon et al., 1991). However, it is unclear how families use these digital artifacts for informal science learning. Therefore, this study investigated whether and how families used digital artifacts (i.e., photos and videos created during an aquarium visit) at home to extend and enhance a preceding ILE visit.

Method. We surveyed 204 parents visiting an aquarium with their children, assessing family demographics (Table 1), whether and how parents used their smartphone in the aquarium (e.g., take photos, make videos, check email), and prospective use of their photos/videos after the aquarium (e.g., post on social media, review with child, share with others). We assessed how parents used their photos/videos two weeks later via an online survey (n=73). A subset of parents (n=25) returned an audio-recorded home conversation reminiscing with the child about the aquarium visit, for which they were instructed to review their aquarium photos/videos. To identify themes in how families used the aquarium photos/videos, verbatim transcripts of parent-child talk in the home conversations were analyzed using an inductive, open-coding approach (Glaser, 1992).

Results, Conclusion, and Significance. Survey results showed that 86 parents (42.2%) reported using a smartphone in the exhibit. Of those, 84 (97.7%) took photos and 59 (68.6%) made videos. All parents who took pictures reported they were extremely likely to review them with their children. From the follow-up survey, parents most frequent uses of the photos after the aquarium were reviewing with their child (74.6%), reviewing alone (43.6 %), sharing with others (43.6%), and posting on social media (30.9%). Most parents (83.6 %) reported that their child asked to look at the photos after the aquarium. Analysis of the home conversations revealed that nearly half the parents and children (n=10) used their photos/videos when talking about the aquarium.

As described in Table 2, we identified three emergent themes relating to how families used their photos/videos when reminiscing about the aquarium visit: science learning, memory cueing, and connecting to existing knowledge. Analyses indicated that families used digital artifacts after informal learning to remember, make meaning of, and extend informal science learning. These findings highlight how family conversations that utilize digital artifacts can create opportunities to bridge and enhance science learning across informal learning ecologies.

Authors

• Kimberly Reynolds Kelly, California State University - Long Beach
  Presenting Author

• Claudine Maloles, California State University - Long Beach
  Non-Presenting Author

• Selah Mokatish
  Non-Presenting Author

• Grace Ocular, Loyola University Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Natalie Rose George, California State University - Long Beach
  Non-Presenting Author