During the preschool years, children’s question-explanation exchanges with teachers serve as a powerful mechanism for their early STEM knowledge acquisition. Utilizing naturalistic longitudinal classroom data, we examined how such conversations in an inquiry-based preschool classroom change during an extended scientific inquiry unit. We were particularly interested in information-seeking questions (causal, e.g. “How will you construct a pathway?”; fact-based, e.g., “Where’s the marble?”). Videos (n = 18; 14 hours) were collected during a three-week inquiry unit on forces and motion and transcribed in CLAN-CHILDES software at the utterance level. Utterances were coded for delivery (question vs. statement) and content (e.g., fact-based, causal). Although teachers ask more questions than children, we found a significant increase in information-seeking questions during Weeks 2 and 3. We explored the content of information-seeking questions and found that the majority of these questions were asked by teachers, and focused on facts. However, the timing of fact-based and causal questions varied. Whereas more causal questions occurred in earlier weeks, more fact-based questions were asked towards the end of the inquiry. These findings provide insight into how children’s and teacher’s questions develop during an inquiry, informing our understanding of early science learning. Even in an inquiry-learning environment, teachers guide interactions, asking questions to support children’s learning. Children’s information-seeking questions increase during certain weeks, suggesting that providing opportunities to ask questions may allow children to be more active in constructing knowledge. Such findings are important for considering how science questions are naturally embedded in an inquiry-based learning classroom.
more »
« less
Did Your Mom Help You Remember?: An Examination of Attorneys’ Subtle Questioning About Suggestive Influence to Children Testifying About Child Sexual Abuse
Researchers studying children’s reports of sexual abuse have focused on how questioners overtly assess coaching and truthfulness (e.g., “Did someone tell you what to say?”). Yet attorneys, and defense attorneys, in particular, may be motivated to ask about suggestive influence and truthfulness in subtle ways, such as with implied meaning (e.g., “Did your mom help you remember?”). Such questions may be particularly challenging for children, who may interpret statements literally, misunderstanding the suggested meaning. The purpose of this study was to examine and categorize how attorneys’ ask about suggestive influence and truthfulness. We wanted to learn how attorneys subtly accuse suggestive influence, and how frequently this occurred. We hypothesized that questions indirectly accusing suggestive influence would be common, and that defense attorneys would ask more subtle questions, and fewer overt questions, than prosecutors. We examined 7,103 lines of questioning asked by prosecutors and defense attorneys to 64 children testifying about alleged child sexual abuse. We found that 9% of all attorneys’ lines of questioning asked about suggestive influence or truthfulness. The majority (66%) of these were indirect accusations. Indirect accusations of suggestive influence spanned a range of subtleties and topics, including addressing conversational influences (e.g., coaching), incidental influences (e.g., witnessing abuse), and others. We also found defense attorneys were less likely than prosecutors to ask about suggestive influence and truthfulness overtly. We conclude that attorneys commonly ask about suggestive influence and truthfulness in subtle ways that developing children may struggle to understand, and which may result in affirmations of influence, even when allegations are true.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1847306
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10309391
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Interpersonal Violence
- ISSN:
- 0886-2605
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
more » « less
Sociologists have identified many factors that mitigate the progressive effects of the legal mobilization to end sexual violence. Within this body of research, however, there is little interrogation about the social construction of sexual harm. I use the case of child sexual abuse to investigate how prosecutors make sense of sexual harm. Data are qualitative interviews with 43 prosecutors. Findings reveal that prosecutors use a framework of sexual identity to construct sexual injury on the child’s body. The perceived harm centers on the anticipated loss of the child’s heterosexual potential. Girl victims are thought to grow into sexual promiscuity, and boy victims are thought to grow into sex offenders. Prosecutorial constructions of child sexual abuse cases are future-oriented, which increases their urgency, and these constructions also imagine the child as a person in formation, rather than a fully actualized person with intrinsic rights. In revealing how the state of sexual victimization is not only deeply gendered but also heteronormative, this research has theoretical implications for childhood studies, queer studies, and anti-violence advocacy.
-
more » « less
Abstract Although children exhibit curiosity regarding science, questions remain regarding how children evaluate others' curiosity and whether evaluations differ across domains that prioritize faith (e.g., religion) versus those that value questioning (e.g., science). In Study 1 (
n = 115 5‐ to 8‐year‐olds; 49% female; 66% White), children evaluated actors who were curious, ignorant and non‐curious, or knowledgeable about religion or science; curiosity elicited relatively favorable moral evaluations (d s > .40). Study 2 (n = 62 7‐ to 8‐year‐olds; 48% female; 63% White) found that these evaluations generalized to behaviors, as children acted more pro‐socially and less punitively toward curious, versus not curious, individuals ( = .37). These findings (data collected 2020–2022) demonstrate children's positive moral evaluations of curiosity and contribute to debates regarding overlap between scientific and religious cognition. -
In the United States, public defenders (lawyers assigned to people accused of crimes who cannot afford a private attorney) serve as an essential bulwark against wrongful arrest and incarceration for low-income and marginalized people. Public defenders have long been overworked and under-resourced. However, these issues have been compounded by increases in the volume and complexity of data in modern criminal cases. We explore the technology needs of public defenders through a series of semi-structured interviews with public defenders and those who work with them. We find that public defenders' ability to reason about novel surveillance data is woefully inadequate not only due to a lack of resources and knowledge, but also due to the structure of the criminal justice system, which gives prosecutors and police (in partnership with private companies) more control over the type of information used in criminal cases than defense attorneys. We find that public defenders may be able to create fairer situations for their clients with better tools for data interpretation and access. Therefore, we call on technologists to attend to the needs of public defenders and the people they represent when designing systems that collect data about people. Our findings illuminate constraints that technologists and privacy advocates should consider as they pursue solutions. In particular, our work complicates notions of individual privacy as the only value in protecting users' rights, and demonstrates the importance of data interpretation alongside data visibility. As data sources become more complex, control over the data cannot be separated from access to the experts and technology to make sense of that data. The growing surveillance data ecosystem may systematically oppress not only those who are most closely observed, but groups of people whose communities and advocates have been deprived of the storytelling power over their information.more » « less
-
more » « less
Two studies ask whether scaffolded children (
n = 243, 5–6 years and 9–10 years) recognize that assistance is needed to learn to use complex artifacts. In Study 1, children were asked to learn to use a toy pantograph. While children recognized the need for assistance for indirect knowledge, 70% of scaffolded children claimed that they would have learned to use the artifact without assistance, even though 0% of children actually succeeded without assistance. In Study 2, this illusion of self‐sufficiency was significantly attenuated when observing another learner being scaffolded. Learners may fail to appreciate artifacts’ opacity because self‐directed exploration can be partially informative, such that learning to use artifacts is typically scaffolded instead of taught explicitly.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605211006369
