How children discuss machines in museum exhibits

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

Abstract

The present investigation seeks to understand how children learn about machines in a museum exhibit, and how a short verbal prompt may influence their discussion with their parents in this informal learning environment. We audio-recorded 61 parent-child dyads (Rchild_age=4- to 8-years-old) while they explored a preselected machine (a manual coffee grinder) for a 5 minute learning phase. After this exploration, children were asked two test questions during a test phase, on behalf of a naive learner named “Mr. Mouse”. Question 1 assessed what children had globally learned about the machine. Question 2 assessed children’s ability to explain how the machine worked.
Thirty children (Mage=6.634 years) received a prompt directed at the machine’s internal components: “This is a machine. The parts inside of it make it work the way it does. Go inside and see what you can learn about this machine”. The remaining children (Mage=6.089 years) received a control prompt: “This is a machine. It has worked the way it does for a long time. Go inside and see what you can learn about this machine”. An independent samples t-test was conducted to ensure that age was not significantly different between conditions (p=.101).
Children’s utterances were coded for discussions of facts about the whole machine, its parts, and/or its mechanisms. Children’s responses to Question 2 were given a knowledgeability rating out of 5 (by a coder blind to age, gender, and condition) as a measure of explanation quality.
Two sets of analyses, for Learning and Test, were conducted using a series of Generalized Linear Models.
Learning Phase. With age, children’s discussions of facts about the whole machine and its parts increased (ps<.001, see Figure 1), while the proportion of children that discussed mechanisms did not (p=.553). The verbal prompts influenced children’s discussions of the machine’s parts, with children providing higher rates of part talk after receiving the component prompt than the control (Mcomponent =5.600, SD=4.746; Mcontrol =3.903, SD=3.986; p=.030).
Test Phase. With age, children’s recall of facts about the whole machine, and its parts increased, as did the proportion of children that discussed its mechanisms (ps< .033). Knowledgeability also increased with age (p<.001). Children appeared more knowledgeable in the component prompt condition (M=3.033) than in the control condition (M=2.161, p=.024). However, only younger children (N=31; Mage=5.31 years; R=4.00 to 6.20) talked more about parts in the component condition than in the control at test (p= .026).
These findings support laboratory work suggesting that children are interested and motivated to learn not only facts about an entire artifact, but also its components and mechanisms (Chuey et al., 2020; Lockhart et al., 2019; Sobel et al., 2007). They also suggest that children’s age influences how they engage with machines in informal environments. The finding that a simple verbal prompt can influence children’s exploratory behavior is also valuable to our partner museum, as their exhibits are embedded in an outdoor historical village, which cannot take full advantage of traditional exhibit features that are typically used to enhance learning (e.g., plaques; interactive electronic features).

Authors

• Elizabeth Attisano, University of Waterloo
  Presenting Author

• Shaylene E. Nancekivell, University of Manitoba
  Non-Presenting Author

• Stephanie Denison, University of Waterloo
  Non-Presenting Author