Tinkering With Testing: Understanding How Museum Program Design Advances Engineering Learning Opportunities for Children

Marcus, Maria; Acosta, Diana I.; Tõugu, Pirko; Uttal, David H.; Haden, Catherıne A.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689425

Cited by 14 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Further, children indicate what causal knowledge they have acquired from their exploration in the course of their reflections, even when tested over long delays (e.g., Marcus et al, 2018). Marcus et al (2021) also showed that children's reflections on their experience at a museum exhibit related to their understanding of the engineering knowledge inherent in that exhibit when children were tested at home a week later.…”

Section: Exploration and Reflection In Museum Settingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relations between children's exploration in a children's museum and their reflections about their exploration

2022

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We examined 6‐ to 9‐year‐olds' (N = 60, 35 girls, 34% White, 23% Hispanic, 2% Black/African American, 2% Asian/Asian American, 22% Mixed Ethnicity/Race, 17% Unavailable, collected April–September 2019 in Providence, RI, USA) first‐person perspectives on their exploration of museum exhibits. We coded goal setting, goal completion, and behaviors that reflected changes to how goals were accomplished. Whether children played collaboratively related to how often they revised behaviors to accomplish goals (OR = 2.14). When asked to reflect on their play, older children related talk about goals with behavioral revisions, demonstrating that children develop the ability to reflect on their goals when they watch their behaviors change (OR = 1.23). We discuss how these results inform the development of metacognitive reflection on learning through exploration.

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Section: Exploration and Reflection In Museum Settingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relations between children's exploration in a children's museum and their reflections about their exploration

2022

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“…In this project, families engaged in tinkering in a hands-on manner using familiar and everyday materials they had at home. Tinkering activities that include an engineering design challenge or a problem to be solved have the best potential to support engineering learning, as families have shown increased engagement in engineering talk and practices during these activities (Marcus, Acosta, et al, 2021; Pagano et al, 2020). Therefore, in this study, families had to consider two criteria: the hat had to fit their head, and the hat could not fall off when jumping up and down.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supporting Latine children’s informal engineering learning through tinkering and oral storytelling.

Acosta,

Haden

2023

Developmental Psychology

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Providing equitable informal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning opportunities to young children from diverse backgrounds may be a way to increase access and interest in STEM and can help to address the broader goal of increasing representation. Importantly, these learning experiences must be meaningful and engage everyday cultural practices. Guided by a strengths-based approach, the current study examines how oral stories as a cultural resource can be harnessed to support Latine children's engagement in a tinkering activity. The project explores whether and how setting an at-home tinkering activity within a story context engenders rich parent-child conversations that provide engineering learning opportunities for young children. Fifty-two Latine parents and children (M age = 7.69 years; 23 girls; 90.4% Mexican heritage) were randomly assigned to either hear a story as a frame for a hands-on tinkering activity or to engage in the same tinkering activity without the story. After families finished tinkering, a researcher elicited the children's reflections about their tinkering experience. Approximately 2 weeks after the activity, children were asked to share their tinkering reflections with a second researcher. Parents and children in the story condition talked more about engineering during tinkering, and these children also talked more about engineering during both reflections than did children in the nostory condition. These findings suggest that integrating oral storytelling into tinkering activities is a promising future direction for the creation of more equitable informal engineering learning opportunities for Latine children and families. Public Significance StatementThis study suggests that integrating the everyday cultural practice of oral storytelling into a tinkering activity can advance informal engineering learning opportunities for Latine children. Tinkering with oral storytelling has the potential to increase families' engagement in and learning of engineering as well as to make engineering more accessible and equitable for Latine parents and children.

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“…One possible explanation for why the implementation of both function-focused goals and orientations was so important for spatial language in reflections is that engineering-focused programs best engage families in engineering concepts and practices. Function-focused goals engage families in the engineering practice of testing and iterating (Marcus et al, 2021) and orientations explicate engineering principles (Acosta et al, 2021). Spatial thinking and skills underlie these engineering principles and practices (Uttal, Miller, et al, 2013).…”

Section: Tinkering Programsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial language in families' conversational reflections about museum experiences

Polinsky

Pagano

Acosta

et al. 2023

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

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Tinkering With Testing: Understanding How Museum Program Design Advances Engineering Learning Opportunities for Children

Cited by 14 publications

References 50 publications

Relations between children's exploration in a children's museum and their reflections about their exploration

Relations between children's exploration in a children's museum and their reflections about their exploration

Supporting Latine children’s informal engineering learning through tinkering and oral storytelling.

Spatial language in families' conversational reflections about museum experiences

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