Collaborative Research: Making Space for Story-Based Tinkering to Scaffold Early Informal Engineering Learning

该项目响应了增加儿童从小接触和参与STEM的呼吁。随着创作者运动的兴起，非正规和正规教育部门见证了创作者和修修补补空间、课程和课程的戏剧性扩张。这在一定程度上是因为修补经验以促进工程教育机会和公平的潜在好处。为了实现这些好处，有必要继续制定和重复设计和促进方法，以深化对工程和其他STEM相关技能的纪律实践的早期参与。该项目将调查如何将故事融入幼儿及其家庭的非正式STEM学习经历。故事可以特别有效，因为它们连接了幼儿和他们的照顾者为修补工作带来的知识和经验，以及可以扩展这种知识的对话和动手活动。此外，该项目的一个独特贡献是，通过鼓励儿童思考他们正在出现的结构的空间属性，来检验这一假设，即故事也可以促进空间推理。这个项目使用基于设计的研究方法来促进知识和产生基于故事的修补的实践的证据基础。使用猜想映射，团队将详细说明他们的初始想法，以及设计/实践如何明显影响照顾者-儿童的行为和学习结果。该小组将考虑参与者的人口统计特征、语言实践和知识来源，以了解正在实施的设计实践(资源、活动)以及它们如何潜在地促进学习。每个研究/后备研究周期的结果作为下一个问题和假设的投入。芝加哥儿童博物馆修补实验室的300多名5至8岁的不同文化背景的儿童和他们的父母将参与这项研究，以研究以下关键问题：(1)什么设计和促进方法能让幼儿和他们的照顾者创造他们自己的工程学丰富的修补故事？(2)博物馆陈列设计(例如，模型、互动展示)和修补故事如何共同产生空间思维，进一步丰富早期STEM的学习机会？以及(3)孩子和他们的家人讲述的修修补补的故事是否支持持久的STEM学习？作为整体迭代、基于设计的方法的一部分，团队还将现场测试在DBR的第一个周期中确定的最有希望的基于故事的修补方法。该项目由推进非正式STEM学习计划(AISL)资助，该计划旨在促进对非正式环境中STEM学习的设计和开发的新方法和基于证据的理解。它将产生活动、展示组件和培训资源，邀请参观者的故事进入开放式问题解决活动。它将通过与物体的直接体验互动和有趣的脚手架(引导)问题解决活动来促进对鼓励工程学习和空间思维的机制的理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project responds to calls to increase children's exposure and engagement in STEM at an early age. With the rise of the maker-movement, the informal and formal education sectors have witnessed a dramatic expansion of maker and tinkering spaces, programs, and curricula. This has happened in part because of the potential benefits of tinkering experiences to promote access and equity in engineering education. To realize these benefits, it is necessary to continue to make and iterate design and facilitation approaches that can deepen early engagement in disciplinary practices of engineering and other STEM-relevant skills. This project will investigate how stories can be integrated into informal STEM learning experiences for young children and their families. Stories can be especially effective because they bridge the knowledge and experiences young children and their caregivers bring to tinkering as well as the conversations and hands-on activities that can extend that knowledge. In addition, a unique contribution of the project is to test the hypothesis that stories can also facilitate spatial reasoning, by encouraging children to think about the spatial properties of their emerging structures. This project uses design-based research methods to advance knowledge and the evidence base for practices that engender story-based tinkering. Using conjecture mapping, the team will specify their initial ideas and how it will be evident that design/practices impact caregivers-child behaviors and learning outcomes. The team will consider the demographic characteristics, linguistic practices, and funds of knowledge of the participants to understand the design practices (resources, activities) being implemented and how they potentially facilitate learning. The outcome of each study/DBR cycle serves as inputs for questions and hypotheses in the next. A culturally diverse group of 300+ children ages 5 to 8 years old and their parents at Chicago Children's Museum's Tinkering Lab will participate in the study to examine the following key questions: (1) What design and facilitation approaches engage young children and their caregivers in creating their own engineering-rich tinkering stories? (2) How can museum exhibit design (e.g., models, interactive displays) and tinkering stories together engender spatial thinking, to further enrich early STEM learning opportunities? and (3) Do the tinkering stories children and their families tell support lasting STEM learning? As part of the overall iterative, design-based approach, the team will also field test the story-based tinkering approaches identified in the first cycles of DBR to be most promising. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. It will result in activities, exhibit components, and training resources that invite visitors' stories into open-ended problem-solving activities. It will advance understanding of mechanisms for encouraging engineering learning and spatial thinking through direct experience interacting with objects, and playful, scaffolded (guided) problem-solving activities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.