Collaborative Research: Explaining, Exploring, and Scientific Reasoning in Museum Settings

为了提高科学，技术，数学和工程（STEM）的学习，至关重要的是要更好地了解幼儿为正规科学教育做好准备的非正式经验。 幼儿天生对周围的世界感到好奇，发展心理学的研究表明，家庭经常支持儿童探索和寻求对科学现象的解释。 如何将儿童天生的好奇心和日常的亲子互动与更正式的STEM学习联系起来，目前还不太清楚。 这个合作项目将由来自加州大学、圣克鲁斯大学、德克萨斯大学和布朗大学的研究人员与儿童探索博物馆、思维中心和普罗维登斯儿童博物馆的非正式学习实践者合作，以调查家庭互动如何与儿童的因果学习相关，以及博物馆工作人员对博物馆展品设计的修改和促进如何影响家庭的互动方式，并增加儿童的因果学习。该项目由教育和学习研究（真实的）计划资助，该计划支持来自一系列学科的研究人员进行基础研究，以加深对STEM学习的了解。该项目小组将研究如何种族和语言上不同的样本的父母和孩子在三个儿童的博物馆在美国从事协作科学学习的研究将结合联合收割机观察研究的亲子互动在现实世界的设置与儿童的因果学习的实验措施。调查人员将研究儿童如何探索和推导有关机械齿轮功能和流体动力学博物馆展品的解释。通过这种方式，研究者将探讨亲子互动方式与儿童因果学习的关系。该团队还将研究在展品中呈现材料的新方法，以促进探索和解释。他们将探讨如何标牌，与博物馆工作人员的对话，家长对博物馆环境中学习的态度，以及家长自己对展品的先验知识可以影响亲子互动和随后的因果学习。该项目将推进基本研究目标，即推进对影响儿童科学内容学习的因素的了解。它还将推进以实践为导向的目标，即为科学博物馆展品的设计制定新的战略，并就家长如何更好地与孩子谈论科学现象提出建议。

In order to improve science, technology, mathematics, and engineering (STEM) learning, it is crucial to better understand the informal experiences that young children have that prepare them for formal science education. Young children are naturally curious about the world around them, and research in developmental psychology shows that families often support children in exploring and seeking explanations for scientific phenomena. It is less clear how to link children's natural curiosity and everyday parent-child interaction with more formal STEM learning. This collaborative project will team researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Texas, and Brown University with informal learning practitioners at the Children's Discovery Museum, The Thinkery, and the Providence Children's Museum in order to investigate how family interaction relates to children's causal learning, as well as how modifications to museum exhibit design and facilitation by museum staff influence families' styles of interaction and increase children's causal learning. This project is funded by the Research on Education and Learning (REAL) program which supports fundamental research by investigators from a range of disciplines in order to deepen what is known about STEM learning. The project team will examine how ethnically and linguistically diverse samples of parents and children engage in collaborative scientific learning in three children's museums across the U.S. The research will combine observational studies of parent-child interaction in a real-world setting with experimental measures of children's causal learning. The investigators will examine how children explore and derive explanations for museum exhibits about mechanical gear function and fluid dynamics. In this way, the researchers will investigate the relation between styles of parent-child interaction and children's causal learning. The team will also investigate novel ways of presenting material within the exhibits to facilitate exploration and explanation. They will explore how signage, conversations with museum staff, parents' attitudes towards learning in museum settings, and parents' own prior knowledge about the exhibits can influence the parent-child interaction and subsequent causal learning. The project will advance the basic research goal of advancing what is known about what affects children's science content learning. It will also advance the practice-oriented goal of developing new strategies for the design of science museum exhibits and make recommendations for how parents can better talk to their children about scientific phenomena.