Scientific Inquiry Intervention Enhances Parent-Child Learning in the Museum

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Parent-child conversations, especially question-asking, play an influential role in children’s knowledge acquisition (Crowley, Callanan et al., 2001; Benjamin, et al., 2010; Willard et al., 2019), critical thinking skills, and their understanding of scientific concepts (Gleason & Schauble, 1999; Ronfard, Zambrana, Hermansen, & Kelemen, 2018). Through these interactions, parents model how to generate questions as well as provide explanations to children’s scientific questions (Callanan & Oakes, 1992, Legare & Lombrozo, 2014).

Research demonstrates that brief, museum interventions, which guide parents’ behavior through “conversational cards” (Fender & Crowley, 2007; Jant et al., 2014) or modeling from museum experts (Marcus et al., 2017) can enhance parent-child scientific conversation, experimentation and exploration in informal learning contexts. For example, Gutwill and Allen (2010) investigated the impact of brief scientific inquiry intervention (focusing on asking questions, exploration) on parent-child STEM conversations in the museum context. Results from Gutwill and Allen (2010) indicated that families who received the scientific inquiry, Juicy Questions, intervention asked more questions and provided more scientific explanations compared to control families receiving only a tour of the museum exhibit.

One open question from the findings of Gutwill and Allen’s (2010) study is whether the intervention impacted inquiry-based learning equally well for both parents and children. To explore this question, videos from families who participated in the Juicy Questions condition (n=38), and a control condition (n=40) from the original Gutwill and Allen (2010) study were transcribed and recoded using CLAN software according to the conventions of Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES; MacWhinney, 2000). The data was coded at the primary level of delivery (questions versus statements) and content (e.g., causal, fact-based).

Consistent with Gutwill and Allen (2010), results indicate that families in the Juicy Questions condition asked more questions (B= -.647, SE = .065, p = <.000). Parents in the Juicy Questions asked more questions compared to parents in the Exhibit Tour condition, (B= -.668, SE = .098, p = <.000), but this difference was not found at the child level. When examining the quality of information-seeking (causal or fact-based) questions and statements, both parents and children in the Juicy Questions condition asked more causal questions (B= -.783, SE = .26, p = .003, see Figure 1) and families in the Juicy Questions condition made more causal statements (B= -338, SE = .144, p = .02) than families in the Exhibit Tour condition. Additionally, parents in the Juicy Questions condition were more likely to ask scaffolding questions (e.g., “what’s our next question?”; B= -.51, SE = .084, p = <.000) and make more directing/scaffolding statements (e.g., “Let’s try it this way; 58% vs. 31%, B= -.44, SE = .084, p = <.000) than parents in the Exhibit Tour condition. Taken together, this research suggests this brief intervention has enhanced causal talk for families in the Juicy Questions condition, it had a greater impact at the parent, rather than child-level. We discuss implications for fostering dyadic engagement in informal learning settings.

Authors

• Mackenzie Conner, Northwestern University
  Presenting Author

• Amanda S Haber, Fairfield University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Joshua Gutwill, Exploratorium
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author