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Children from underserved, minoritized, and immigrant families have less access to early out-of-school STEM learning opportunities. Playful Learning Landscapes increase the accessibility of early STEM learning in everyday public spaces (e.g., bus stops, grocery stores) by merging principles of guided play and STEM learning goals with local community's values. We used community-based design research to (1) identify Latine families’ funds of knowledge related to play, science, and math learning, and (2) create designs for playful environments merging families’ values and practices with guided play and STEM learning principles. Our design partners were 32 parents, primarily Spanish-speaking immigrant mothers from Mexico, and two directors of a local community organization. The design process consisted of co-design sessions, interviews, inductive thematic analysis, elaboration, playtest and feedback, and iteration. Our findings showed that familismo, heritage representation, and the meaning of community spaces influenced the ways families engaged in STEM learning and the learning environments they desired in their community. Moreover, families’ STEM practices were rooted in everyday experiences of playing cultural games, family food routines, and outdoor activities. Incorporating Latine parents in the design process and leveraging their funds of knowledge resulted in culturally situated designs aligned with playful and STEM learning principles. This study contributes to knowledge of Latine families’ values and practices that can help create home-community connections to strengthen children's learning. 

Video programs are important, accessible educational resources for young children, especially those from an under-resourced backgrounds. These programs’ potential can be amplified if children are allowed to socially interact with media characters during their video watching. This paper presents the design and empirical investigation of interactive science-focused videos in which the main character, powered by a conversational agent, engaged in contingent conversation with children by asking children questions and providing responsive feedback. We found that children actively interacted with the media character in the conversational videos and their parents spontaneously provided support in the process. We also found that the children who watched the conversational video performed better in the immediate, episode-specific science assessment compared to their peers who watched the broadcast, non-interactive version of the same episode. Several design implications are discussed for using conversational technologies to better support child active learning and parent involvement in video watching. 

What if the environment could be transformed in culturally-responsive and inclusive ways to foster high-quality interactions and spark conversations that drive learning? In this article, we describe a new initiative accomplishing this, called Playful Learning Landscapes (PLL). PLL is an evidence-based initiative that blends findings from the science of learning with community-based participatory research to transform physical public spaces and educational settings into playful learning hubs. Here, we describe our model for conducting this research, which is mindful of three key components: community input, how children learn best, and what children need to learn to be successful in the 21st century economy. We describe how this model was implemented in two PLL case studies: one in a predominantly Latine community and the second in early childhood education classrooms. Furthermore, we describe how research employing our model can be rigorously and reliably evaluated using observational and methodological tools that respond to diverse cultural settings and learning outcomes. For example, our work evaluates how PLL impacts adult–child interaction quality and language use, attitudes about play and learning, and community civic engagement. Taken together, this article highlights new ways to involve community voices in developmental and educational research and provides a model of how science can be translated into practice and evaluated in culturally responsive ways. This synthesis of our process and evaluation can be used by researchers, policymakers, and educators to reimagine early educational experiences with an eye toward the built environment that children inhabit in everyday life, creating opportunities that foster lifelong learning.