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

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

It is well-established that learning partners, e.g., educators or parents, play an essential role in guiding young children’s informal STEM learning by providing exposure to STEM concepts (e.g., Crowley et al., 2001). However, recent work has highlighted that it is also important for learning partners to facilitate children’s active engagement in the learning process. For example, in Chandler-Campbell et al. (2020), encouraging parents to modify their delivery of causal scientific talk—using questions rather than statements—encouraged children to engage in scientific discourse. More research is needed to examine other conversational mechanisms that learning partners may use to facilitate children’s engagement in high-quality STEM interactions. The papers in this symposium leverage learning partners’ applied expertise to discover variations in their conversational practices that may benefit children’s active engagement in STEM learning scenarios.

The first paper finds that the extent to which caregivers and children reciprocate each others’ talk about numbers and math, not children’s exposure to this talk, positively relates to children’s math abilities. The second paper focuses on how variation in autonomy-supportive speech provided by museum educators was significantly and positively associated with child verbal and nonverbal engagement in a STEM activity. The third paper examines how encouraging caregivers and children to collaboratively engage in storytelling practices in a tinkering activity was associated with higher levels of engineering talk and memory for engineering processes after the activity. Overall, this symposium highlights multiple mechanisms by which learning partners can effectively promote children’s active engagement in informal STEM-learning activities.

Sub Unit

• Education, Schooling

Chairs

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

• Shirley Duong, University of Pittsburgh

Individual Presentations

• Effects of autonomy-supportive language on child engagement in informal STEM learning - Presenting Author: Ian L. Chandler-Campbell, University of Texas at Dallas; Claire E Manley, Boston University; Shirley Duong, University of Pittsburgh; Alexis Pickering, Boston University; Kathleen H. Corriveau, Boston University

• It takes two to tango: Dynamic and reciprocal caregiver-child conversations about numbers and math - Presenting Author: Shirley Duong, University of Pittsburgh; Tehran Davis; Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, University of Pittsburgh; Heather J. Bachman, University of Pittsburgh; Melissa E Libertus, University of Pittsburgh

• Digital Storytelling during Family Tinkering Activities Supports Children’s Engineering Talk and Memory - Presenting Author: Lauren C Pagano, Northwestern University; Riley E George; Afnan A. Amdeen; David H. Uttal, Northwestern University; Catherine A. Haden, Loyola University Chicago