The Struggle is Real: Boosting Children’s Persistence in STEM Through Storybook Reading

• In Event: Learning by Reading: Fostering Children’s Science Learning Through Storybooks

Abstract

Children’s storybooks have been shown to be a developmentally appropriate way to foster children’s early scientific knowledge and analogical reasoning (Brown, et al., 2020; Ganea et al., 2011; Kelemen, Emmons, Seston & Ganea, 2014; Shtulman et al., 2016; Strouse et al., 2018). Research also suggests that manipulating language in a book can foster children’s thinking about topics ranging from social categories to electricity (e.g. Leech et al., 2019; Leech et al., 2020; Gelman, Taylor, Nguyen, 2004; Rhodes et al., 2012; Chalik and Rhodes, 2015). These findings demonstrate that subtle differences in language presented in storybooks fosters preschoolers early cognitive development.

In the current study, we explored how subtle language differences in a storybook about scientific achievement and success impact children’s persistence and motivation during an impossible scientific task. In one study, Lin-Siegler, Ahn, Chen, Fang & Luna-Lucero (2016) found that high school students who read about scientists’ intellectual and personal struggles performed better in their science classes than students who only read about scientists’ academic success. Although Lin-Siegler et al. (2016) focused on a sample of high school students, research described above has found that even young children’s science performance can be impacted by appealing to social essentialism through the use of generics (e.g. Rhodes et al., 2019).

We adapted the stories from Lin-Siegler et al. (2016) study to be developmentally appropriate for 4- and 5-year-old children. Children (N = 62; 30 girls) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: Achievement (the scientist was described having received many awards and recognition through their lifetime, with no discussion of struggle), Intellectual Struggles (the scientist was described as having made mistakes along the way to success) and Life Struggles (the book emphasized personal struggles, such as having no money for food). After reading the book, children were asked a series of 12 questions adapted from the Dimension of Mastery Questionnaire 18, which examined their persistence and motivation when faced with a challenging task. Finally, children were presented with an impossible STEM task.

Analyses revealed that children’s persistence on the STEM task differed by storybook condition, (F(2, 59) = 9.345, p < .001). Post hoc comparisons with Bonferroni corrections revealed that there was a significant difference in persistence on the impossible STEM task between children in the Achievement condition and children in the Intellectual Struggles condition (Mean difference = 45.900 seconds, SD = 11.597 seconds, p = .001). Additionally, there was a significant difference between children in the Achievement condition and children in the Life Struggles condition (Mean difference = 40.947 seconds, SD = 11.471 seconds, p = .002). There was no difference in children’s persistence on the impossible task between the Life or Intellectual Struggle conditions. Taken together, the findings from this study suggest that exposing children to storybooks about famous scientists’ struggles, a critical part of the scientific process, enhances their motivation and persistence on a STEM task. The storybook allowed children to learn that failure is typical even for the most successful scientists, information that they would not otherwise have known.

Authors

• Veronika Pilarova
  Presenting Author

• Sona Kumar, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amanda S Haber, Fairfield University
  Non-Presenting Author

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