9075 Views (as of 05/2023)
  1. Maureen Callanan
  2. https://psychology.ucsc.edu/faculty/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=callanan
  3. Professor
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. University of California Santa Cruz
  1. Garrett Jaeger
  2. Postdoctoral Researcher
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. University of California Santa Cruz
  1. Cristine Legare
  2. http://www.cristinelegare.com
  3. Associate Professor
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. University of Texas at Austin
  1. David Sobel
  2. https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/causality-and-mind/home
  3. Professor
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Brown University

Collaborative Research: Explaining, Exploring, and Scientific Reasoning in Mu...

NSF Awards: 1420241, 1420259, 1420548

2018 (see original presentation & discussion)

Informal / multi-age

Our research uses observational methods to examine how parent-child engagement in explaining and exploring is related to children’s learning. Children’s museums provide an important informal learning context to gain insight into variability in family interaction as well as in children’s engagement and creativity in STEM learning. A primary focus of our video will be how we cultivated mutually beneficial partnerships between children’s museums and university-based research teams.The data collected on parent-child interactions were complemented by surveys of parents’ attitudes toward science and their beliefs about the relation between play and learning. These methods allow us to evaluate how parents’ beliefs about play and science are related to interactions with their children at museum exhibits. Further, after parents and children interacted at exhibits, children participated in follow-up tasks where they played with toys similar to the target exhibits. These follow-up tasks allow us to consider how explaining and exploring at exhibits may be related to children’s learning and STEM engagement.A strength of this research is that it integrates a diverse set of populations in the US, highlighting subtle differences in affordances of museum exhibits at different sites. Our data show significant associations among children's systematic exploration of the exhibit, their troubleshooting behaviors, and subsequent generative behaviors on their own. Our submission to NSF Stem for All will show families interacting at several exhibits we studied, along with comments by museum partners and researchers regarding the value of productive, reciprocal relationships for both research and practice.

This video has had approximately 809 visits by 632 visitors from 184 unique locations. It has been played 475 times as of 05/2023.
Click to See Activity Worldwide
Map reflects activity with this presentation from the 2018 STEM for All Video Showcase: Transforming the Educational Landscape website, as well as the STEM For All Multiplex website.
Based on periodically updated Google Analytics data. This is intended to show usage trends but may not capture all activity from every visitor.
show more
Discussion from the 2018 STEM for All Video Showcase (27 posts)
  • Icon for: Maureen Callanan

    Maureen Callanan

    Lead Presenter
    Professor
    May 13, 2018 | 06:09 p.m.

    Welcome to our video! Our studies look at explaining and exploring in everyday family conversations at museum exhibits. We'd love to hear your ideas about the possibilities and challenges of studying these conversations as a setting for understanding children's early STEM reasoning.

     

  • Icon for: Barbara Rogoff

    Barbara Rogoff

    Researcher
    May 14, 2018 | 02:32 a.m.

    This is such interesting research!  Can you give an example of a family conversation that seems very generative to your team, for supporting children's learning?

  • Icon for: Maureen Callanan

    Maureen Callanan

    Lead Presenter
    Professor
    May 14, 2018 | 01:41 p.m.

    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.

     
    2
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Anna Hurst
    Barbara Rogoff
  • Icon for: William Spitzer

    William Spitzer

    Facilitator
    Vice President
    May 14, 2018 | 07:18 a.m.

    This sounds like such a great study for better understanding and enhancing children's learning, parent engagement, and facilitation by museum staff.

    I was curious about whether you have come up with any interesting hypotheses for how to better facilitate exploration and discovery, and whether you have tested out any new strategies with parents or museum staff?

  • Icon for: Maureen Callanan

    Maureen Callanan

    Lead Presenter
    Professor
    May 14, 2018 | 01:55 p.m.

    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.

  • Icon for: Julia Skolnik

    Julia Skolnik

    Informal Educator
    May 14, 2018 | 09:08 a.m.

    Great model! The Museum of Science Boston has a similar project called National Living Laboratory where researchers partner with museums around the country to engage families in cognitive science research on the floor of exhibits. Have you connected with them, and/or shown how your work might inform one another?

  • Icon for: Maureen Callanan

    Maureen Callanan

    Lead Presenter
    Professor
    May 14, 2018 | 05:18 p.m.

    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...

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Claire Pillsbury
  • Icon for: David Sobel

    David Sobel

    Co-Presenter
    Professor
    May 15, 2018 | 10:51 a.m.

    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.

  • Icon for: William Spitzer

    William Spitzer

    Facilitator
    Vice President
    May 17, 2018 | 07:29 a.m.

    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.

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Garrett Jaeger
  • Icon for: David Sobel

    David Sobel

    Co-Presenter
    Professor
    May 17, 2018 | 09:40 a.m.

    Thank you for your support.

  • Icon for: Claire Pillsbury

    Claire Pillsbury

    Facilitator
    Program Director
    May 14, 2018 | 01:42 p.m.

    Interesting research project as we anecdotally see how parents commentary or 'parallel play' can trigger different modes of interaction for their children.  Were you looking at primarily verbal or conversational parent child interaction or also observing and coding for activity/behavior of parents and how that influenced children's explaining and exploring?

  • Icon for: Maureen Callanan

    Maureen Callanan

    Lead Presenter
    Professor
    May 14, 2018 | 05:37 p.m.

    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! 

  • Icon for: Sue Allen

    Sue Allen

    Researcher
    May 14, 2018 | 09:46 p.m.

    What a terrific project, and very ambitious in integrating these key concepts of exploration and explanation across so many challenging dimensions: research-practice, lab-based controls to the full complexity of family learning in museums, micro-analyses of gesture and speech through whole-visit learning and more,and then incorporating a multi-site study as well. It's really stitching together a big landscape! 

     
    2
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Garrett Jaeger
    Claire Pillsbury
  • Icon for: Maureen Callanan

    Maureen Callanan

    Lead Presenter
    Professor
    May 15, 2018 | 01:37 a.m.

    Thanks so much Sue!  We have appreciated your encouragement!

  • Icon for: Jan Mokros

    Jan Mokros

    Researcher
    May 15, 2018 | 08:06 a.m.

    Yes, a great project!  Could you say a bit more about parents' response:  Does the research itself lead parents to ask *you* more questions about children's learning?  Seems like there might be a positive feedback loop in here somewhere!

  • Icon for: Maureen Callanan

    Maureen Callanan

    Lead Presenter
    Professor
    May 15, 2018 | 02:23 p.m.

    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. 

  • Icon for: Julianne Mueller-Northcott

    Julianne Mueller-Northcott

    Facilitator
    Science Teacher
    May 15, 2018 | 11:11 a.m.

    I love that this research is taking place in such a fun and authentic setting. And I can see how the research will be helpful and informative in potentially redesigning exhibits. I am curious to know if you will also share with parents tips/strategies that you learn from the research on ways they can best engage their kids in these exhibits to best support their early STEM experiences? 

  • Icon for: Maureen Callanan

    Maureen Callanan

    Lead Presenter
    Professor
    May 16, 2018 | 03:06 p.m.

    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!

  • Icon for: Anna Hurst

    Anna Hurst

    Informal Educator
    May 15, 2018 | 10:34 p.m.

    This sounds like very interesting work, Maureen! I can imagine we how we might apply some of your findings in our future work together, especially now that we are looking toward creating more materials specifically geared toward families. I look forward to hearing more about this project as you progress!

  • Icon for: Maureen Callanan

    Maureen Callanan

    Lead Presenter
    Professor
    May 16, 2018 | 03:07 p.m.

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

  • Sandy Waxman

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 16, 2018 | 12:21 a.m.

    What a wonderful job! Bravo!!

  • Icon for: Maureen Callanan

    Maureen Callanan

    Lead Presenter
    Professor
    May 16, 2018 | 03:07 p.m.

    Thank you so much Sandy!

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Cristine Legare
  • Icon for: David Sobel

    David Sobel

    Co-Presenter
    Professor
    May 17, 2018 | 09:41 a.m.

    Thanks, Sandy.

  • Icon for: H Chad Lane

    H Chad Lane

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 17, 2018 | 05:13 p.m.

    Loved the video and the way you are all highlighting the many shared goals we have (btw, I'm also on a project that is an academic/museum partnership, so I shared it with them too). My question is if you have any sense of the range of parental involvement?  Do most sit back and let the children steer?  (I would hope!)  I remember Mike Horn had some work comparing tangible interfaces (blocks to move around) vs. a computer interface (keyboard/mouse) and found massive differences in terms of who "drove". Children took over when it was a tangible interface, but not nearly as much with the keyboard/mouse (more of Mom and Dad's turf).  Thanks!

  • Icon for: Maureen Callanan

    Maureen Callanan

    Lead Presenter
    Professor
    May 17, 2018 | 06:18 p.m.

    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!

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    H Chad Lane
  • Icon for: Lucía Alcalá

    Lucía Alcalá

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 18, 2018 | 12:35 a.m.

    Maureen, this is a very interesting and thought provoking research project ! 

    I'm wondering if you noticed differences in exploration/explanation with families from diverse backgrounds. I'm thinking about families where children are actively involved in household work (or other activities at home), keenly noticing their surroundings, where there might be less explanation and more exploration. 

  • Icon for: Maureen Callanan

    Maureen Callanan

    Lead Presenter
    Professor
    May 18, 2018 | 11:15 a.m.

    Thanks Lucia!  Yes this is one of the questions we'd like to ask - we are looking at both explaining and exploring across different groups of families who visit the museums.  We don't have information about children's engagement in household work but we will look at families' self-described ethnicity as a proxy for their cultural community.  Based on your work and Barbara's, as well as my work with Graciela Solis, I agree with your prediction that exploring may be more common than explaining in Mexican heritage families. 

     
    1
    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Cristine Legare
  • Further posting is closed as the event has ended.