What did you learn outside of school today? Using structured interviews to document home and community activities related to science and technology

Abstract

An important but underrepresented element in the growing body of work on informal science education is research designed to examine the nature and scope of children's science‐related activities outside of school. We have begun to study children's activities related to science, nature, and technology by developing structured interviews for parents of middle class preschool and kindergarten children and for students in upper‐elementary grades. These interviews can be used to construct profiles of children's exposure to science activities outside of school, such as watching television, reading, attending exhibits or events at community facilities, participating in experiments or demonstrations at home, and asking questions of parents. We describe how these interviews were developed, what kinds of information this type of research enabled us to obtain, and what lessons we have learned in the process. The level of extracurricular participation reported in a wide range of science‐related activities was very high. Structured interviews can help teachers gain information about students' exposure to science‐related learning activities in their home and community. This information can be used as a platform on which classroom instruction can be built. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 81:651–662, 1997.

Family sense‐making practices in science center conversations

“…In total, we coded the 1524 utterances about science as containing 1955 topical ideas about science. Emergent codes were developed to examine the data, along with codes developed from consulting the previous literature on conversations in museums and interviewing about everyday science (see, e.g., Allen, 2002;Ash, 2002;Gilbert & Priest, 1997;Korpan, Bisanz, Bisanz, Boehme, & Lynch, 1997) and children's ideas about animals (Barman, Barman, Cox, Newhouse, & Goldston, 2000;Carey, 1985;Keil, 1992).…”

From teachers to testers: How parents talk to novice and expert children in a natural history museum

“…The role of parents in museums to interpret information and shape early experiences with science could have powerful implication for children's early science literacy. Researchers have suggested repeatedly that informal learning environments are often the first places that children engage with science content and scientific reasoning, long before attending school ( Callanan & Oakes, 1992;Keil, 1998;Korpan, Bisanz, Bisanz, & Boehme, 1997). Parents' willingness and ability to provide information mediation and interpretation often depends on their familiarity with the content and processes being exhibited, their beliefs about what their role should be in museum settings, and their larger visit agendas (Falk et al, 1998;Gelman, Masssey, & McManus, 1991;Swartz & Crowley, 2004).…”

Las Visitas a Museos De Ciencias Y Su Relación Con La Escuela. Una Revisión Documental.

“…En esta categoría se incluyen algunos artículos cuyo objetivo era realizar un estudio de las investigaciones que tenían como objeto la enseñanza y el aprendizaje en museos (Martín, 2004;Kay et al 2009;Kisiel, 2009;Boehme et al 1997).…”