An official website of the United States government
Abstract This study addressed whether combining tinkering with digital storytelling (i.e., narrating and reflecting about experiences to an imagined audience) can engender engineering learning opportunities. Eighty‐four families with 5‐ to 10‐year‐old (M = 7.69) children (48% female children; 57% White, 11% Asian, 6% Black) watched a video introducing a tinkering activity and were randomly assigned either to a digital storytelling condition or a no digital storytelling condition during tinkering. After tinkering, families reflected on their tinkering experience and were randomly assigned to either engage in digital storytelling or not. Children in the digital storytelling condition during tinkering spoke most to an imagined audience during tinkering, talked most about engineering at reflection, and remembered the most information about the experience weeks later.
more »
« less
Promoting children’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics learning at home through tinkering and storytelling
This study examined whether connecting storytelling and tinkering can advance early STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) learning opportunities for children. A total of 62 families with 4- to 10-year-old ( M = 8.03) children were observed via Zoom. They watched a video invitation to tinker at home prepared by museum educators prior to tinkering. Then, half of the families were prompted to think up a story before tinkering (story-based tinkering group), whereas the other half were simply asked to begin tinkering (no-story group). Once they had finished tinkering, researchers elicited children’s reflections about their tinkering experience. A subset of the families ( n = 45) also reminisced about their tinkering experience several weeks later. The story instructions provided before tinkering engendered children’s storytelling during tinkering and when reflecting on the experience. Children in the story-based tinkering group also talked the most about STEM both during tinkering, and subsequently when reminiscing with their parents about their tinkering experience.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1906940
- PAR ID:
- 10431484
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Volume:
- 14
- ISSN:
- 1664-1078
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
When young children create, they are exploring their emerging skills. And when young children reflect, they are transforming their learning experiences. Yet early childhood play environments often lack toys and tools to scaffold reflection. In this work, we design a stuffed animal robot to converse with young children and prompt creative reflection through open-ended storytelling. We also contribute six design goals for child-robot interaction design. In a hybrid Wizard of Oz study, 33 children ages 4-5 years old across 10 U.S. states engaged in creative play then conversed with a stuffed animal robot to tell a story about their creation. By analyzing children’s story transcripts, we discover four approaches that young children use when responding to the robot’s reflective prompting: Imaginative, Narrative Recall, Process-Oriented, and Descriptive Labeling. Across these approaches, we find that open-ended child-robot interaction can integrate personally meaningful reflective storytelling into diverse creative play practices.more » « less
-
Abstract Children’s memberships in social groups have profound effects on their motivation. Stereotypes about social groups shape children’s beliefs about what is expected for their group members. These beliefs can influence children’s developing beliefs about themselves (self‐perceptions). In this article, I review research on how gender stereotypes influence children’s motivation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), including ability beliefs and sense of belonging. When children belong to a gender group that is negatively stereotyped in a STEM field, they may doubt their own capabilities and whether they belong in that field, making it harder for them to develop interest over time. Developmentally, the influence of gender stereotypes on motivation begins during preschool and strengthens during late childhood. I also address the consequences of different kinds of stereotypes and why some children are more influenced by stereotypes than others. Understanding this process in childhood will help researchers design effective interventions to remedy educational inequities in STEM.more » « less
-
There is growing interest in stories as potentially powerful tools for science learning. In this mini-review article, we discuss theory and evidence indicating that, especially for young children, listening to and sharing stories with adult caregivers at home can make scientific ideas and inquiry practices meaningful and accessible. We review recent research offering evidence that stories presented in books can advance children’s science learning. Nonetheless, most of this work focuses on middle-class European-American U. S. children and involves narrative story books. Given the national imperative to increase Latine 1 representation in STEM education and career pursuits in the U. S., we argue that it is vital that we broaden the definition of stories to include oral narrative storytelling and other conversational routines that Latine families engage in at home. Cultural communities with firmly rooted oral traditions, such as those from Latin American heritage, rely frequently on oral storytelling rather than book reading to convey world and community knowledge to young children. Therefore, we advocate for a strengths-based approach that considers Latine families’ everyday practices around science and storytelling on their own terms instead of contrasting them with European-American middle-class practices. We offer support for the view that for young children in Latine communities, culturally relevant oral practices, including personal narrative storytelling, can engender significant opportunities for family science learning at home.more » « less
-
Effective storytelling relies on engagement and interaction. This work develops an automated software platform for telling stories to children and investigates the impact of two design choices on children’s engagement and willingness to interact with the system: story distribution and the use of complex gesture. A storyteller condition compares stories told in a third person, narrator voice with those distributed between a narrator and first-person story characters. Basic gestures are used in all our storytellings, but, in a second factor, some are augmented with gestures that indicate conversational turn changes, references to other characters and prompt children to ask questions. An analysis of eye gaze indicates that children attend more to the story when a distributed storytelling model is used. Gesture prompts appear to encourage children to ask questions, something that children did, but at a relatively low rate. Interestingly, the children most frequently asked “why” questions. Gaze switching happened more quickly when the story characters began to speak than for narrator turns. These results have implications for future agent-based storytelling system research.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1146063
