Children’s Informal STEM Learning Within Family Interactions: Cultural Strengths of Families from Non-Dominant Communities

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Children’s learning and development is influenced by their cultural values and practices. Our understanding of children’s learning largely reflects the practices of dominant groups, such as monolingual English-speaking, White, middle-class families. Consequently, not enough is known about the cultural practices and values that support the learning of children from diverse sociocultural and linguistic communities. Moreover, families from non-dominant groups are at risk of being considered deficient when their practices are compared to those of the dominant group. There is a substantial need for research that examines the practices of families from marginalized communities, but also work that is grounded in and captures the cultural strengths of these families.

In this symposium, we present work from researchers who take a strengths-based approach to study children’s informal learning of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) within the context of family interactions. Our focus is on non-dominant communities, including U.S. Latine families and Indigenous families in Central America, whose STEM knowledge and practices have been marginalized and underrepresented in dominant STEM discourse. Using observational, experimental, and interview methodologies, the group of papers present qualitative and quantitative analyses that demonstrate how cultural values, such as familismo, and practices, including oral storytelling, teaching behaviors, and environmental practices, can help support engagement in and learning of STEM. The work illustrates how studies designed for and with families from non-dominant communities, that consider family interactions at their core, can reveal linkages between families’ cultural strengths and STEM-related practices.

Sub Unit

• Education, Schooling

Chair

• Diana I Acosta, University of California - Santa Cruz

Individual Presentations

• Math in a Birthday Picnic: Latine Caregivers’ Teaching and Play Behaviors in an Everyday Task - Presenting Author: Paola Montufar Soria, New York University; Verónica Mesalles, New York University; Cidney Marie Fernández, New York University; Gigliana Melzi, New York University

• Families’ Routines in Indigenous Communities: Links to Children’s Development of Environmental Concepts - Presenting Author: Claudia Lorena Castaneda, University of California - Santa Cruz; Maureen A Callanan, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Advancing Latine Children’s Informal Engineering Learning through Tinkering and Oral Storytelling - Presenting Author: Diana I Acosta, University of California - Santa Cruz; Catherine A. Haden, Loyola University Chicago

• Playful and Cultural Learning at the Grocery Store: Qualitative Analysis of Latine Families’ Interactions - Presenting Author: R Mishael Sedas, University of California - Irvine; Karlena D Ochoa, University of California - Irvine; Vanessa Noemy Bermudez, University of California - Irvine; Julie Salazar, University of California - Irvine; Ashlee Belgrave, University of California - Irvine; Annelise Pesch, Temple University; Kathy A Hirsh-Pasek, Temple University; June Ahn, University of California Irvine; Andres Sebastian Bustamante, University of California - Irvine