Parent-Child Explanatory Talk and Children’s Engagement in a Museum

• In Event: Parent-Child Conversations as a Mechanism for Cognitive Development

Abstract

Children’s diverse experiences hearing explanatory talk may relate to their developing interest in science topics. We explored links between parents’ explanatory talk and styles of children’s engagement during a visit to a children’s museum. The exhibition (“Mammoth Discovery”), designed with the goal of sparking talk about scientific evidence, displayed fossilized mammoth bones. In addition to identifying families’ spontaneous explanatory talk, we also asked whether priming families with an inquiry activity about an unfamiliar fossil might affect the patterns of parent talk and child engagement. Previous work has reported links between parents’ explanatory talk and children’s explanatory talk at a museum exhibit (Callanan, Castaneda, Luce, & Martin, 2017). However, for young children, it is important to assess engagement involving action as well as talk, and active involvement as well as quiet attention. This study addresses links between parents’ explanatory talk and measures of children’s engagement.

Participants included 83 families with children between 3 and 11 years (mean age 6 years). Families described their ethnicity as white or European-American (35%), Asian or Asian-American (21%), South Asian or Indian (18%), Latino or Hispanic (12%), or a mix of races/ethnicities (12%). In addition to English, families spoke a variety of languages including Farsi, German, Hindi, Mandarin, Spanish, Tamil, Russian, and Vietnamese. Parent-child interactions were videotaped at eight exhibits displaying mammoth fossils, replica bones, or hands-on activities. Half of the families first explored a “mystery object” (later revealed as a fossilized mammoth tooth) before visiting the exhibits. The other half of the families visited the exhibits before exploring the “mystery object.” We coded parents’ explanatory statements (“With teeth like that it must have chewed its food a lot”), explanatory questions (“What do you think it looked like when it was alive?”), and evidence talk (“I can tell it’s a mammoth because it has tusks”) at the exhibits. Children’s engagement was coded in 10-second segments: Actively engaged (exploration, conceptual talk), Quietly engaged (keenly observing, attending), or Unengaged.

Regression analyses (controlling for child age and visit length) revealed different patterns depending on order of exhibit or mystery object. Unexpectedly, no parent talk measures correlated with children’s active engagement. In families who visited the exhibit first, frequency of parents’ explanatory statements predicted the proportion of segments where children were quietly engaged. This may reflect children attending more when their parent was explaining. In contrast, for families who explored the mystery object first, children’s quiet engagement was correlated with parents’ explanatory questions and evidence talk, but was negatively associated with parents’ explanatory statements. Priming with the mystery object apparently led children to focus more attention when parents asked explanatory questions and talked about evidence, but less attention if parents explained.

The findings suggest intriguing links between families’ conversation and children’s attention, moderated by the structure of informal learning activities. Discussion will expand on potential ways these findings may help to explain individual variation in children’s science interest and engagement.

Authors

• Claudia Lorena Castaneda, University of California - Santa Cruz
  Presenting Author

• Maureen A Callanan, University of California - Santa Cruz
  Non-Presenting Author