Latine Families’ Engineering Conversations and Narratives about Tinkering in a Children’s Museum

• In Event: Storybooks and Equitable STEM Learning in Early Childhood: Moving from Books to Narratives

Abstract

This project focuses on 42 Latine parents and their children (20 girls, Mage = 8 years old) who engaged in an open-ended problem solving activity (i.e., tinkering) in a children’s museum, and the narratives the children told about their experiences post-tinkering. The work draws on research on memory and narrative suggesting that what children learn and remember about their experiences is impacted by the conversations they have with their parents as events unfold, and can be revealed through children’s narratives even immediately after their experiences (Benjamin et al., 2010; Haden et al., 2014). One aim was to increase understanding of how variations among Latine parents’ level of formal schooling contribute to families’ approaches to informal STEM learning (Solis & Callanan, 2016; Tenenbaum & Callanan, 2008). A further aim was to determine how a museum practice – orienting visitors to key information that can support learning – might foster engineering talk by families during tinkering and by children in their post-tinkering narratives. Such orientation practices can be beneficial for diverse families with high levels of schooling (Haden et al., 2014); however, not much is known about whether and how staff-facilitated orientations might advance learning opportunities among Latine families who vary in their schooling experience.

The tinkering challenge presented to families was to make something that rolls. Museum staff provided a brief orientation to basic engineering concepts related to wheels and axles in Spanish or English, based on the families’ preference. Then, families were observed as they worked in the exhibit and created their own rolling creation with the available materials (e.g., bottle caps, straws, cardboard). Immediately after tinkering, researchers elicited the children’s narratives about tinkering using a series of open-ended prompts.

Analyses revealed associations between parents’ years of schooling and families’ engineering talk during tinkering, and between parents’ years of schooling and children’s engineering talk in their post-tinkering narratives. Families with parents with higher schooling talked more about engineering while tinkering, r = .43, p < .01, and had children who talk more about engineering post-tinkering, r = .35, p < .05. While they worked together to make something that rolled, 11 families (26%) referenced the engineering orientation they received from the museum staff member. Referring to this orientation occurred equally among families with parents having low and high schooling. Interestingly, families who talked about the engineering orientation during tinkering also engaged in more engineering talk (M = 20.91) than families who did not refer to the orientation, (M = 9.74), F(1, 39) = 16.69, p < .001. Likewise, children in families who talked about the orientation during tinkering talked more about engineering in their post-tinkering narratives (M = 5.64) than children in families who did not refer to the orientation when they were tinkering (M = 3.19), F(1, 39) = 7.11, p = .01.

Discussion of these findings will highlight ways that developmental science research can contribute to an evidence base for practices that must be considered when creating equitable informal STEM learning opportunities for Latine families.

Authors

• Diana I Acosta, University of California - Santa Cruz
  Presenting Author

• Graciela Solis, Loyola University Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Perla Blanca Gamez, Loyola University Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Catherine A. Haden, Loyola University Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author