Order of experience with growth mindset messages influences children’s engagement with STEM in a museum

• In Event: Children’s exploration in informal learning environments

Abstract

Children’s museums are invaluable spaces to capture the dynamics between children’s exploration, parent-child interactions, and children’s engagement and learning (Callanan, 2012; Van Schijndel et al., 2010). Parental presence at a museum exhibit prompts children to spend more time at the exhibit (Crowley et al., 2001). Parent-child interactions at an exhibit can influence children’s learning and engagement (e.g., Medina & Sobel, 2020; Sobel et al., 2020). Moreover, exploration changes while families play with the complexity of play building over time (Willard, Busch, Cullum et al., 2019).
Our goal is to consider how the addition of growth mindset messaging, a simple exhibit modification, might influence how parents and children experience an exhibit and are motivated by subsequent challenges about the exhibit. Communicating the importance of growth as opposed to fixed mindsets in problem solving, fosters students’ motivation and achievement (e.g., Yeager & Dweck, 2012).
We asked families to play at open-ended circuit exhibit, which we modified to include descriptive (e.g., “This is a battery”) or mindset-orienting (e.g., “Keep trying, it’s tricky”) messages. Sixty-four parent-child dyads played together at the exhibit (27 girls, 37 boys, Mage = 67.22 months). We hypothesized that mindset messages would be more effective when children were afforded time to engage in complex play with exhibit materials (as opposed to their initial exposure to the exhibit). Families were first given circuit blocks with the descriptive or mindset messages. After 90s, they were given additional blocks with the other message type. They could then play for up to 15 minutes. Children then participated in a set of progressively difficult challenges.
We categorized parent-child interaction into three groups: (1) Child-directed, in which children explored freely and set goals for themselves. (2) Jointly-directed, in which both parents and children explored and worked together to set goals, and (3) Parent-directed, in which parents directed and set goals for the exploration (Fung & Callanan, 2013). Dyads who received mindset messages first were less likely to be parent-directed than dyads who received descriptive messages first, 2(2) = 11.07, p = .004.
We also coded the number of challenges children participated in and the proportion of challenges they completed on their own. Children who received descriptive messages first (i.e., received the mindset messages when their play was more complex) showed greater engagement with the challenges, controlling for age, parent-child interaction style, and the proportion of challenges they solved, Wald 2(1) = 5.55, p = .02. The condition x parent-child interaction style suggested that the benefit of condition went most to children from child-directed dyads, Wald 2(2) = 8.41, p = .004. Unlike engagement, the timing of the messages did not relate to performance on the challenges.
The timing of growth mindset messaging during play affected parents and children differently. Parents who received mindset messages initially showed less of an inclination to direct their children’s play. Children who received the mindset messages second, however, showed greater engagement. Further research must reconcile these competing findings to help guide museums in fostering engagement through messaging.

Authors

• Laura Stricker, Brown University
  Presenting Author

• David Marc Sobel, Brown University
  Non-Presenting Author