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Previous studies document associations between parents’ use of guided play strategies and children’s STEM skills. We extended existing research by exploring mediating mechanisms that may account for these links. Parents played with their preschool children (N=75; 49% girls, 51% boys; 94% White, 3% Black, 1% Biracial, 1% Asian, 1% Native American; Mage = 4.82 years), undertaking a building challenge. Videotaped play was coded for parents’ guiding STEM talk (density of math, spatial, and scientific inquiry language) and management strategy (high- vs. low-directiveness). Mediators included children’s STEM talk during play and self-regulated learning (assessed by executive function tests and examiner’s ratings of children’s task orientation). Structural equation models confirmed hypothesized mediated paths from parent STEM talk to child math (but not spatial) skills via child STEM talk, and from parent STEM talk and directiveness to child math and spatial skills via child self-regulated learning. We discuss implications for future research and intervention design.
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Guided STEM Activity Kits for Parents With Preschool Children: Design, Frequency of Use, and Parent Evaluation
Parents boost STEM skills by scaffolding children’s attention and discovery during play, but many need support to do so. Using Human Centered Design (HCD) methods, we created activity kits fostering parents’ (a) involvement in and (b) valuing of parent-child play to promote preschoolers’ STEM skills. Study 1 documents how HCD methods informed the design of guided activity kits. In initial home visits, we videorecorded 6 parent-child dyads playing with basic building materials. Play revealed minimal parental STEM scaffolding and talk. Collaborating with 18 families and drawing on prior research, parent interviews, videotaped play sessions, and advisory-board members’ expertise, the interdisciplinary research team designed and refined activity kit prototypes. Study 2 was a randomized field test comparing use and evaluation of final guided kits (n=50) versus basic kits (n=25) which contained identical building materials and challenges but omitted scaffolding guides. Both groups received a kit by mail every other week for 10 weeks. Relative to parents given basic kits, parents given guided kits (a) reported significantly more sustained use of the kits across the 10 weeks, (b) felt more self-efficacy in fostering their child’s STEM learning, and (c) judged that their child had achieved greater STEM-skill learning from program use.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1811472
- PAR ID:
- 10553506
- Publisher / Repository:
- Taylor and Francis
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Research in Childhood Education
- Volume:
- 38
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 0256-8543
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 540 to 558
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- preschool STEM education parent involvement home learning guided play human centered design.
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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ABSTRACT Several studies suggest that children's learning and engagement with the content of play activities is affected by the ways parents and children interact. In particular, when parents are overly directive and set more goals during play with their children, their children tend to play less or are less engaged by subsequent challenges with the activity on their own. A concern, however, is that this directed interaction style is only compared with other styles of parent–child interaction, not with a baseline measure of engagement or learning. The present study incorporates such a baseline measure, comparing it with previously‐collected data on children's engagement and learning in a set of circuit‐building challenges. Regarding engagement, children were less engaged by the challenges when their parents were more directed during a free play setting (tested in Sobel et al. 2021) than when children had no prior experience playing with the circuit components. Regarding learning, children were better able to complete the circuit challenges and provided more causal explanations for how the completed challenges worked when they had experience playing with the circuit blocks with their parent. Overall, these data suggest that parent–child interaction during a STEM activity relates to both children's engagement and performance on challenges related to that activity.more » « less
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IntroductionEarly informal learning experiences are essential for sparking long-term interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). In a prior study, we found more promising parent involvement outcomes when families of young children were provided with STEM family education events along with home STEM activity kits compared to providing workshops alone. This study was a conceptual replication using the same program—Teaching Together STEM—to deliver educational workshops plus home activity kits; however, we varied the delivery method by using virtual “funshops” to evaluate if parents perceived this modality as feasible and useful. MethodsMuseum informal science educators introduced four units via virtual video chat sessions linked to 12 hands-on STEM activities that were mailed to families randomly assigned to the treatment group. Half of the families were assigned to a waitlist control group that received a portion of the virtual program after the posttest. Participants included 60 families with children aged 3 to 5 years from diverse linguistic and socioeconomic backgrounds. ResultsOur results indicate no significant group differences in the primary outcome of parents’ involvement in informal STEM but a small, positive effect size (ES = 0.18) that was similar in magnitude to the prior, in-person study. Although parents mostly perceived the remote delivery as convenient and the materials as engaging for their child, there were no significant program impacts on children’s general science interests (ES = −0.19). DiscussionDespite the convenience, parents reported time was a barrier to doing STEM activities at home. Parents with lower education levels were less likely to attend, suggesting virtual approaches are not sufficient for ensuring broad access to family engagement programs for populations underrepresented in STEM.more » « less
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Adult verbal input occurs frequently during parent–child interactions. However, few studies have considered how parent language varies across informal STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) activities. In this study, we examined how open and closed parent questions (a) differed across three STEM activities and (b) related to math, science, and vocabulary knowledge in their preschool-aged children. A total of 173 parents and their preschool children (Mage = 4 years) from lower socioeconomic households were video-recorded participating in three STEM-related activities: (a) a pretend grocery store activity, (b) a bridge-building challenge, and (c) a book read about a science topic. Parent questions were categorized as open or closed according to the presence of key question terms. Results indicate that the three activities elicited different frequencies of parent open and closed questions, with the grocery store activity containing the most open and closed questions. Children’s science knowledge was predicted by the frequency and proportion of parent open questions during the book read. These results enhance our understanding of the role of parent questions in young children’s language environments in different informal learning contexts.more » « less
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IntroductionThis article investigates an early STEM family engagement program offered during the pre-kindergarten (pre-k) year. Pre-k is an important juncture for community organizations to support children’s STEM engagement and parental involvement in informal STEM learning. We evaluated a program called Teaching Together STEM, which offers a series of museum outreach and family events at schools with the aim of broadening access to early STEM for children experiencing poverty. We replicated program content previously delivered using in-person events but shifted to a hybrid delivery approach that combined two virtual and two in-person events with linguistically diverse families of 3- and 4-year-olds. We evaluated whether attending events improved parent outcomes, such as involvement in STEM activities at home, and child outcomes, such as engagement in a STEM task. MethodsThe analytic sample included 59 families—35 randomly assigned families took part in the treatment and 24 families were assigned to a waitlist control group. Developed in Spanish and English, the informal STEM program was hosted by local children’s museum educators for 21 pre-k classrooms using these components: (a) a series of four family education “funshops;” (b) parent tips and reminders via text message; (c) nine thematically related, take-home STEM extension activity kits; and (d) a family museum field trip for each school, as well as individual family museum passes. ResultsThere were no significant impacts on primary outcomes of parent involvement (effect size [ES] = −0.03) or child STEM engagement/enthusiasm (ES = −0.73). There were improvements in some aspects of parents’ STEM attitudes (e.g., math expectancy ES = 0.58), but other distal parent and child outcomes were not significantly changed. DiscussionThe hybrid delivery approach showed promise in terms of attendance and parent satisfaction but likely was not intensive enough to increase parent involvement. We discuss implications for other community-based family engagement programs focused on broadening participation in informal STEM.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/02568543.2023.2301104
