Parents and Roles in Informal Making Education: Informing and Implications for Making in Museums

Abstract

, and has co-developed the STEAM Labs TM program to engage middle and high school students in learning science, technology, engineering, arts, and math concepts through designing and building chain reaction machines. He has appeared on many TV shows (including Modern Marvels on The History Channel and Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC) and a movie with his Rube Goldberg machines, and worked as a behind-the scenes engineer for season 3 of the PBS engineering design reality TV show, Design Squad. He also held the Guinness World Record for the largest number of steps -125 -in a working Rube Goldberg machine. Parents and Roles in Informal Making Education: Informing and Implications for Making in Museums AbstractMaking is becoming a popular activity for young people to get interested in STEM topics. Maker Faire events and extracurricular making clubs support this engagement. Informal science education, particularly through science and technology centers have been adopting making activities for floor programs and some have created maker spaces.This study explores how museums, and in particular children's museums, incorporate making for young makers and families and how educational learning objectives match up with the attributes of making and values expressed by maker families. This will be addressed by both qualitative analysis of ongoing interviews with Young Makers and the parents of Young Makers. Emergent thematic analysis is be used to highlight themes relevant to Maker families working together. Additionally, this work will explore the goals and practices of informal science education museum community and establish a baseline and range of making activities and makerspaces in childrens' museums.There is a trend for museums and science/technology centers to establish Makerspaces. The Pittsburgh Children's Museum has created Makeshop, a makerspace reflecting 7 specific learning practices, for example. Research has shown Makerspaces as sources of multidisciplinary learning, a blending of communities of practice with formal learning, and finally that the depth of learning is in the making. While the research points to the values of making in general, and specifically making in museum makerspaces, there seems to be little research on family making, and how museums can encourage family making. This research hopes to bridge both these gaps by studying the importance of family making and its relevance in children's museums. Data has been collected over the last 3 years from the New York and Bay Area flagship Maker Faires with sets of interviews with approximately 32 Young Makers and the parents of Young Makers. The particular perspective of Maker families and the associated analysis has not been previously done and this study will allow for me to explore what it means to be a Maker family. Additionally, I will extend this work to have discussions with museum professionals of their informal STEM learning goals and how the hands-on exploration, tinkering and discovery abound in the Maker community could fit the learning goals. Gu...

Examining the Role of Parents in Promoting Computational Thinking in Children: A Case Study on one Homeschool Family (Fundamental)

“…While each role is unique, they all serve to support a child's engagement in CT competencies. The diversity of roles demonstrates an important aspect of parental support and influence in a homeschooled child's learning [24]. There are many different ways to support children in a homeschool setting, and these are just a few observed in our study that led to the child's understanding of the various CT competencies.…”

“…Though each contribution from the mother was unique, it served one purpose: to foster the child's understanding of CT. The diversity of roles captured in the parent-child interactions illustrate an important aspect of the parental influence in the homeschooled child's learning [24]. The homeschooling family in this study highlights the importance for the engineering community to remember this population when conducting engineering education research.…”

“…This demonstrates that in both formal and informal settings, facilitation is integral to motivation and engagement. Parental facilitation can foster a child's interest in STEM+C disciplines and enable a homeschooled child to engage in CT competencies [24].…”

Caregivers’ Multiple Roles in Supporting their Child through an Engineering Design Project (Fundamental)

“…Yet, the actual identification or name of the roles and their descriptions are not consistent. For example, [20] described the role of cheerleader as "did not always have a complete understanding of their child's project, but were supportive emotionally of the child through the child's exploration and project completion" (p. 9). A similar description by Yu et al [21] was labeled as spectator; a caregiver that provides encouragement and help when needed.…”

“…Regardless of the differences in role names, descriptions, and approaches, looking across the scholarship on caregiver roles, it is clear that there are multiple roles that caregivers enact and describe when supporting their children in various STEM-related learning environments [7], [20], [23], and these roles can be viewed as a continuum from providing more assistance and hands-on support (i.e., active) to less assistance and hands-on support (i.e., passive) [8], [20]. In addition, these multiple roles do not necessarily require any expertise in a particular concept, topic, tool, and/or discipline [23].…”