Effects of autonomy-supportive language on child engagement in informal STEM learning

• In Event: Tinkerer, Investigator, Learner, Scientist: Promoting children’s active role in informal STEM conversations

Abstract

Learning partners such as parents, teachers, and museum educators play an important role in providing children early STEM-learning opportunities via guided activities. However, in order for children to have more opportunities to learn via guided activities, they need to be behaviorally engaged (e.g., Halliday et al., 2018). Research is still needed to determine optimal approaches for fostering child engagement in STEM learning activities (Kirschner et al., 2006; Tobias & Duffy, 2009). One way learning partners may be able to foster child engagement is by using autonomy-supportive speech, which has been associated with increased academic success, sustained involvement, and more positive attitudes towards learning activities (Baroodya & Diamond, 2012; Doctoroff & Arnold, 2017). Autonomy-supportive speech can include offering choices, providing rationale alongside directions, encouraging children’s activity-related interests, and providing positive feedback to children’s contributions. In this study, we explore how variation in the level of autonomy-supportive speech provided by museum guides to four- to six-year-old children might affect children’s verbal and non-verbal engagement in an informal STEM learning activity.
Five high-school-aged museum guides in a Northeastern science museum, with experience in teaching young children about science using interactive exhibits, interacted with 114 four- to six-year-old children (~23 children per guide) in dyadic, semi-structured “scientific investigations” with snap circuit boards based on methods developed by Chandler-Campbell et al. (2020). These videotaped interactions were transcribed at the utterance level and guides’ speech was coded for both autonomy-supportive and directive verbal behaviors outlined in previous research (Doctoroff & Arnold, 2017). Then, we calculated the proportion of guides’ speech that was autonomy-supportive or directive out of their total speech. Children’s verbal and non-verbal engagement were measured by children’s proportional verbal contribution to the dyad’s overall talk and the duration a child chose to participate in the activity, respectively.
Preliminary analyses of 92 interactions revealed considerable variability in the proportion of guides utterances that were autonomy-supportive (M = 39.81%, Range = 19.72-62.27, SD = 8.79) and directive (M = 14.10%, Range = 0-26.23, SD = 5.20). Similarly, children varied in their verbal (M = 24.42%, Range = 3.23-51.50, SD = 9.21) and nonverbal engagement (M = 10.14 minutes, Range = 2.50-23.55, SD = 5.24). In two multilevel linear regressions, higher levels of autonomy-supportive speech from guides were significantly associated with a higher levels of child verbal (β = 0.28, SE = 0.11, p < 0.01) and nonverbal engagement (β = 0.20, SE = 0.06, p < 0.01). However, higher levels of directive speech from guides were not significantly associated with children’s verbal or nonverbal engagement. There was no significant relation between guides’ autonomy-supportive speech and directive speech. Overall, this research indicates that learning partners’ level of autonomy-supportive guidance differs even when using the same semi-structured activity and suggests that increasing learning partners’ autonomy supportive speech may promote higher child engagement. This work can inform future research focused on designing interventions using autonomy-supportive speech to foster children’s active engagement in informal STEM activities.

Authors

• Ian L. Chandler-Campbell, University of Texas at Dallas
  Presenting Author

• Claire E Manley, Boston University

• Shirley Duong, University of Pittsburgh

• Alexis Pickering, Boston University

• Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University