Children’s engagement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is fundamental to developing scientific literacy. Informal learning environments, such as children’s museums, are a robust setting for fostering STEM engagement, particularly through parent-child interaction. Although the role of STEM learning has been frequently documented in informal learning environments, how children are engaged by STEM topics and STEM’s relation to children’s everyday lives has not been equally well studied. In this article, I suggest that there are ways that parent-child interaction during informal learning opportunities can relate to children’s engagement in STEM activities. A fundamental mechanism underlying this relation is how parents support children’s autonomy as they play together. Parent-child interaction relates to children’s STEM engagement not only in situ but also in how they generalize that behavior to their everyday activities, which opens up promising new lines of research.
This content will become publicly available on October 1, 2025
- Award ID(s):
- 1811356
- PAR ID:
- 10553944
- Publisher / Repository:
- National Science Foundation (NSF) Public Access Repository
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
- Volume:
- 246
- Issue:
- C
- ISSN:
- 0022-0965
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 106000
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Informal STEM Parent–child dyads Preschool STEM learning Questions
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Results Our 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).
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Methods The 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.
Results There 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.
Discussion The 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.
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