“Why do dogs pant?”: Characteristics of parental explanations about science predict children's knowledge

Abstract

Using a new method for examining parental explanations in a laboratory setting, the prompted explanation task, this study examines how characteristics of parental explanations about biology relate to children's knowledge. Parents (N = 148; M age = 38; 84% female, 16% male; 67% having completed college) of children ages 7-10 (M age = 8.92; 47% female, 53% male; 58% White, 9.5% Black, 9.5% Asian) provided answers to eight how and why questions about biology. Parents used a number of different approaches to address the questions, including providing more mechanistic responses to how questions and more teleological responses to why questions. The characteristics of parental explanations-most notably, how frequently parents provided correct responses-predicted children's performance on measures of verbal intelligence and biological knowledge. Additional exploratory analyses and implications for children's learning are discussed.

“Why Can't I See My Friends and Family?”: Children's Questions and Parental Explanations About Coronavirus

“…To the best of our knowledge, little research has examined how children's questions and parental explanations about COVID-19 change throughout early childhood. Some work has invited teachers and parents to respond to children's hypothetical questions through written (Haber, Leech, Benton, Dashoush, & Corriveau, 2021) or verbal prompts (Mills et al, 2021). In recent work, Haber et al (2021) utilized a survey methodology to understand how teachers think they should respond to children's science questions.…”

“…In recent work, Haber et al (2021) utilized a survey methodology to understand how teachers think they should respond to children's science questions. Mills et al (2021) used a Prompted Explanation Task, a controlled task where parents were asked to provide explanations to a set of questions (imagining their child had been the one asking the question). In the current study, we capitalize on the use of simulated questions and explanations by inviting parents of children between ages 3 and 8 years to complete an online survey about COVID-19 in May 2020.…”

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“…We did find that parents' reports of having sufficient knowledge was associated with whether they ever provided explanations. This result is in line with prior work suggesting that parental attitudes and knowledge are important variables associated with parent-child interactions in a variety of domains including biology [8,43], social norms [18,27] and educational opportunities [26,44,45].…”

“…In their responses parents often gave explanations, appealed to authority, or simply provided facts. This is encouraging as parents that provide more correct explanations have been shown to have children with higher knowledge in that domain [8,42]. To examine more in-depth the content of parents' responses, we analyzed their responses to a set of predetermined target questions about different aspects of the pandemic.…”

“…With the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic there has been an increase in resources targeted to parents on how to talk with their children about the situation both from official organizations [1] and other media [2][3][4]. Providing guidance to parents on how to talk to their children might be beneficial, as many studies show that parental talk influences children's beliefs and behaviors [5][6][7][8][9], including their views on the causes of illness [10] and their ability to cope with stressful situations [11][12][13]. However, these resources tend to focus on how to talk to children about what viruses are and how illness is transmitted while not providing evidence that children are asking questions about these topics or have any trouble understanding them.…”