ABSTRACT

This study is a collaborative project between university researchers and museum practitioners investigating ways to advance STEM learning opportunities for young children and their families in museums. The focus of the work is on how the knowledge resources that are available to families (e.g., prior knowledge, information provided by the museum staff) can support talk about STEM during and after hands-on problem-solving activities in a museum exhibit. More specifically, we asked whether and how associations between parent–child talk about STEM during tinkering, and the STEM content of the children’s reflections on their learning afterward, might vary based on the knowledge that is available to families to make sense of their experiences. One hundred and eleven families with 5- to 10-year-old children (M = 7.23 years) were observed in a tinkering exhibit in a children’s museum. Results indicated that the more parents and children talked about STEM during tinkering, the more the children talked about STEM in their reflections. This association was moderated by children’s knowledge based on prior tinkering experiences, and knowledge that was acquired through a pre-tinkering, facilitated orientation by museum staff about engineering, but not by children’s age or parents’ educational attainment. Implications for museum research and practice are discussed.

摘要

这项研究是大学研究人员与博物馆从业者之间的一项合作项目，旨在研究为博物馆中的幼儿及其家庭提高STEM学习机会的方法。工作重点是在博物馆展览中动手解决问题的过程中和之后，家庭可用的知识资源（例如，先验知识，博物馆工作人员提供的信息）如何支持关于STEM的讨论。更具体地说，我们询问亲子在修补过程中谈论STEM以及孩子对以后学习的反思中STEM内容之间的关联以及如何关联，这可能会根据家庭可以用来了解他们的经历的知识而有所不同。111个有5至10岁孩子的家庭（M= 7.23岁）在儿童博物馆的修补展览中被观察到。结果表明，在修补过程中，父母和孩子谈论STEM的次数越多，孩子在思考中谈论STEM的次数就越多。这种关联是由儿童根据以前的修补经验积累的知识，以及通过预先修补而获得的知识来促进的，博物馆工作人员对工程学的定位有所帮助，而不是由儿童的年龄或父母的受教育程度决定的。讨论了对博物馆研究和实践的影响。