Abstract
This study examined the effects of two pedagogical training approaches on parent-child dyads’ discussion of scientific content in an informal museum setting. Forty-seven children (mean age = 5.43) and their parents were randomly assigned to training conditions where an experimenter modeled one of two different pedagogical approaches when interacting with the child and a science-based activity: (1) a scientific inquiry-based process or (2) a scientific statement-sharing method. Both approaches provided the same information about scientific mechanisms but differed in the process through which that content was delivered. Immediately following the training, parents were invited to model the same approach with their child with a novel science-based activity. Results indicated significant differences in the process through which parents prompted discussion of the targeted information content: when talking about causal scientific concepts, parents in the scientific inquiry condition were significantly more likely to pose questions to their child than parents in the scientific statements condition. Moreover, children in the scientific inquiry condition were marginally more responsive to parental causal talk and provided significantly more scientific content in response. These findings provide initial evidence that training parents to guide their children using scientific inquiry-based approaches in informal learning settings can encourage children to participate in more joint scientific conversations.
Highlights
Parents, as some of children’s first learning partners, play a vital role in scaffolding children’s learning about scientific concepts (e.g., Crowley et al, 2001; Vlach and Noll, 2016; Legare et al, 2017)
Before turning to the current study, we review prior research regarding modification of parents’ delivery of scientific content in interactions with their children as well as preliminary studies suggesting benefits in the use of scientific inquiry approaches in informal learning contexts
To confirm that the conclusions of our mixed-model logistic regressions were found across individual dyads, we explored the number of dyads in the scientific inquiry condition who displayed more questions than statements when presenting causal content
Summary
As some of children’s first learning partners, play a vital role in scaffolding children’s learning about scientific concepts (e.g., Crowley et al, 2001; Vlach and Noll, 2016; Legare et al, 2017). Parents play an active role in fostering children’s engagement in science by modeling interest through the questions they pose to children as well as providing explanations to their children’s questions (Crowley and Callanan, 1998; Dotterer et al, 2009; Wang and Degol, 2013; Willard et al, 2019). We expand upon the importance of parent-child conversations about science before turning to our rationale for the current study
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