Research on social, emotional, and academic development of children often notes the critical role of parents. Yet, how parents perceive and engage with children’s reactions to difficulty and
perceived failure, to then shape their perspective and engagement with learning remains under investigated. The current study explored children and parents’ perceptions of and reactions to frustration and failure within an out-of-school, home-based engineering program. Specifically, we asked 1) How was failure perceived by participating families? and 2) What was the subsequent action/reaction to that failure? Data were derived from post-program interviews with children and parents who participated in a home-based, elementary engineering program
involving take-home kits and self-identified engineering projects. Findings derived from
descriptive qualitative methods and thematic analysis illustrated development of parent thinking around failure and frustration, both within themselves and their reactions to seeing such emotions in their children. Analysis further revealed how such emotions emerge within their children and impact their experiences. These findings shed light on ways child-parent engagement and the tactics employed by parents may influence a child’s perseverance and willingness to work through difficulty. This research represents an entry point for investigating how parents perceive and react to failures and challenges, and how these reactions shape their communication around failure with their children. Such parental reactions and communication may shape children’s mindset development, perspectives, and engagement. Implications for family engagement and influence on children’s learning through academic emotions in STEM and engineering are discussed.
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This content will become publicly available on July 1, 2024
“This is hard!” Children’s and parents’ talk about difficulty during dyadic interactions
Children’s beliefs about the contribution of effort and ability to success and failure shape their decisions to persist or give up on challenging tasks, with consequences for their academic success. But how do children learn about the concept of “challenge”? Prior work has shown that parents’ verbal responses to success and failure shape children’s motivational beliefs. In this study, we explore another type of talk - parent and child talk about difficulty - which could contribute to children’s motivational beliefs. We performed secondary analyses of two observational studies of parent-child interactions in the United States (Boston and Philadelphia) from age 3 to 4th grade (Study 1, 51% girls, 65.5% White, at least 43.2% below Federal poverty line) and at 1st grade (Study 2, 54% girls, 72% White, family income-to-needs ratio M(SD) = 4.41(2.95)) to identify talk about difficulty, characterize the content of those statements, and assess whether task context, child and parent gender, child age, and other parent motivational talk were associated with quantity of child and parent difficulty talk. We found that many families did discuss difficulty, with variation among families. Parents and children tended to use general statements to talk about difficulty (e.g., “That was hard!”), and task context affected child and parent difficulty talk. In the NICHD-SECCYD dataset, mothers’ highlighting how task features contributed to task difficulty was positively correlated with their process praise, suggesting that this talk could be motivationally relevant.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1760144
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10495963
- Publisher / Repository:
- Developmental Psychology
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Developmental Psychology
- Volume:
- 59
- Issue:
- 7
- ISSN:
- 0012-1649
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1268 to 1282
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- ["Motivational Frameworks, Academic Achievement, Parent-child Interactions"]
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Introduction The United States struggles with racial/ethnic disparities in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) degrees and occupations. According to situated expectancy-value theory, the experience and knowledge parents gain through STEM degrees and occupations shape the STEM support they provide and relatedly their adolescents' STEM motivational beliefs. Methods We analyzed data from the High School Longitudinal Study (N = 14,000; 50% female; Mage = 14 years old at 9th grade), which is a recent U.S. data set that surveyed a nationally representative sample of adolescents. Results and Conclusions Results showed that parent STEM support in 9th grade and adolescent STEM motivational beliefs in 11th grade were lower in families where parents did not have a STEM degree/occupation than in families where at least one parent had a STEM degree/occupation. Our within-group analyses suggested that parents' STEM support was generally positively related to adolescents' STEM motivational beliefs among families where parents did not have a STEM degree/occupation for all racial/ethnic groups except Black adolescents. However, these relations were not significant among adolescents who had a parent STEM degree/occupation. Furthermore, although Asian and White adolescents' parents were more likely to hold a STEM degree/occupation than Latina/o and Black adolescents' parents, the associations between parent STEM support and adolescents' STEM motivational beliefs emerged for Asian, Latina/o, and White adolescents.more » « less
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Abstract Background Research points to family talk and interactions involving STEM concepts as one of the most influential informal learning experiences that shape an individual's STEM identity development and encourage their pursuit of a STEM career. However, a recent literature review uncovers limited research regarding the development of engineering identity in young children.
Purpose The purpose of this study was to add to this scant literature by exploring how children position themselves as engineers and how children are positioned as engineers through interactions with parents and other adults within a program focused on family engagement within an engineering design process.
Methods This study includes two parent–child dyads. We collected and analyzed approximately 19.5 h of video data of the two child–parent dyads interacting with one another throughout an engineering design process as part of an out‐of‐school program.
Results Results highlight three ways in which the two children enacted various engineering identities through their positioning, negotiation, and acceptance and/or rejection of positionalities as they engaged in an engineering design process with a parent. These identity enactments included (a) possessing knowledge and authority to make decisions regarding the development of their self‐identified engineering problem and prototype; (b) questioning and challenging adult ideas, solutions, and construction of prototypes; and (c) documenting and communicating their thinking regarding the engineering design through sketches and notes.
Conclusions The significance of this study lies in its potential to change the landscape of those who pursue an engineering career and to contribute to the limited research and ongoing conversations about how to foster environments that support families in creative and collaborative learning specific to the engineering discipline.
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