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

为了改善科学、技术、数学和工程（STEM）的学习，更好地了解幼儿为接受正规科学教育做准备的非正式经历至关重要。幼儿天生对周围的世界充满好奇，发展心理学的研究表明，家庭通常支持孩子探索和寻求科学现象的解释。目前尚不清楚如何将儿童天生的好奇心和日常亲子互动与更正式的STEM学习联系起来。这个合作项目将由加州大学、圣克鲁斯分校、德克萨斯大学和布朗大学的研究人员与儿童发现博物馆、the Thinkery和普罗维登斯儿童博物馆的非正式学习实践者组成，以调查家庭互动与儿童因果学习的关系。以及博物馆展品设计的修改和博物馆工作人员的促进如何影响家庭互动方式，增加儿童的因果学习。该项目由教育与学习研究（REAL）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。该项目团队将研究在美国三个儿童博物馆中，不同种族和语言的父母和孩子是如何参与合作科学学习的。该研究将结合现实世界中亲子互动的观察研究和儿童因果学习的实验测量。调查人员将研究儿童如何探索和推导博物馆展品关于机械齿轮功能和流体动力学的解释。本研究旨在探讨亲子互动方式与幼儿因果学习的关系。该团队还将研究在展品中展示材料的新方法，以促进探索和解释。他们将探讨标牌、与博物馆工作人员的对话、家长在博物馆环境中对学习的态度以及家长自己对展品的先验知识如何影响亲子互动和随后的因果学习。该项目将推进基础研究目标，即推进对影响儿童科学内容学习的已知因素的研究。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策略，并就父母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.