Thanks Barbara!  We're still analyzing the data but one finding from a preliminary study that has been very thought-provoking is that when parents encourage their children to explain at the exhibit, the family is likely to engage in more discussion about causal mechanisms (like "How can we get the doll to turn by turning this gear?" or "Look at how the small gear is going faster than the big gear!").  On the other hand, when parents encourage their children to explore the exhibit, the children show more innovative and complex behavior when building their own gear machines in the follow-up task. This is showing us that there are diverse ways that parents are supporting their children's causal thinking -- each associated with different but meaningful outcomes.

Thank you!  We are actually testing out the effectiveness of several types of interventions in the three museums as part of the grant.  It's too soon to say what our findings are, but we are looking at providing challenges as a way to spur exploration, trying out variations in open-ended questions on museum signage to encourage explaining and/or exploring, and engaging facilitators to try out variations in the questions that they ask depending on the ways that families are engaging with the exhibits.

Thanks Julia!  We're very familiar with the Living Laboratory and have co-presented with Becki Kipling in a number of settings!  There are interesting similarities and differences between our model and the Living Lab model.  My co-presenter Dave Sobel, and our colleague Jennifer Jipson have edited a book that considers multiple models for cognitive development research in museums, including chapters about Living Lab as well as our model: https://www.routledge.com/Cognitive-Development...

Hi. Thanks for your comment. Yes, we know about National Living Lab, and have worked with them in the past. NLL is one way that museums and researchers can collaborate, but there are many others. We describe some of the ways that this kind of collaboration can take place in a book that I co-edited with Jen Jipson. NLL is a participant in that book, but so are many other museum-researcher partnerships, including the three laboratories/museums collaborating on this project.

David,

Thank you for the book reference, it looks really interesting. I have heard a lot of comments among practitioners that they don't find a lot of educational research very relevant, and from researchers that practitioners don't implement their findings. It's great to have so many examples in one place that show successful collaboration.

Thank you for your support.

Thank you for your comment Claire!  It's a very interesting question how parents' comments and/or actions might inspire different engagement by their children!  We are coding for both conversation and activity in this study -- and we're looking at explaining and exploring by both parents and children.  We're also looking at variation in the style of interaction (more parent-directed, child-directed, or jointly-directed).   It's a lot of data and we are still finishing some of the coding so stay tuned for more information about patterns we find in how parents and children interact! 

Thanks so much Sue!  We have appreciated your encouragement!

You're right - there is a bit of a feedback loop!  Our museum partners help us to communicate our findings back to visitors in general, as well as to the participants in our studies. 

Thank you for your comment Julianne!  Each of the museum partnerships has ways of sharing findings with their visitors (through newsletters, postings in a museum "research wall", etc).  It's a great idea to also come up with some tips and strategies for parents -- we'll be considering doing this once we have completed our analyses!

Thanks Anna!  We definitely should consider areas of overlap between this project and the My Sky Tonight project!

Thank you so much Sandy!

Thanks, Sandy.

Hi Chad, Thanks for your comment -- I love your video too!  We have quite a bit of variability in types of parent involvement and we're coding that too.  Given our age range (4-7 yrs) there are many parents who engage at least collaboratively with their children rather than sitting back.  But there are levels of collaboration vs scaffolding vs direction and we plan to look further into how that variation relates to our other measures.  We also have some hints that parents' types of involvement might vary across families from different cultural backgrounds.  But all of this is still in progress!