At-risk Preschoolers' Questions and Explanations: Science in Action at Home and in the Classroom

Project 4.3 Final Report Principal Investigator: Maureen A. Callanan - University of California, Santa Cruz Project Period: July, 1996 - June, 2001 Executive Summary Appendix A: Publications, Papers, and Presentations Based on Findings Purpose The importance of this work is two-fold. First, by exploring children's thinking as part of the social and cultural context of family, we add to theories of cognitive development. Second, these studies allow us to begin to understand more about the situations within which children are first exploring scientific topics and the process of doing science, and this understanding has potential importance for policy and curriculum decisions regarding science education. Research Design Several different types of studies were conducted as part of this project. In two studies of parent-child conversation, we compared conversations from two different groups of families who varied in the number of years parents had attended formal schools. All of the families were of Mexican descent. In the study of family science workshops we observed families interacting during the workshops, and then followed up with telephone interviews in which parents were asked to report on the conversations they had had with their children following the workshop. The teachers who conducted the workshops were then interviewed and presented with children's questions and ideas (as reported by parents). We discussed with the teachers ways that they could build on children's questions and ideas in the second family science workshop, and then observed the second workshops. In the study of preschool science we observed projects that the teachers designed in order to introduce science to the children, as well as discussions of science that emerged in routine activities. Data Collection The parent-child conversation studies involved diary records, videotaped records of parents' interactions with their children, and informal interviews with the parents. Parents' conversations with children were observed through videotaped interactions in a children's museum, and in family homes while engaging in a structured task that we provided. In another study parents kept diary records of their children's "why" questions and the conversations that ensued. The data collection in the family science workshop study again involved videotaped interactions as well as telephone interviews with parents. The preschool study consisted of videotaped classroom interactions. A new ongoing collaboration began during this period as well. Professor Doris Ash, in Education at UCSC, is P.I. on a study of Latino families' conversations about biology at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We have been involved in some of the early data analysis of the videotape collected by Professor Ash, and we will be collaborating on a related study at the Seymour Discovery Center at Long Marine Lab. Sample The sample for the parent-child interaction studies included 48 families of Mexican-descent living in the Monterey Bay area of Northern California. In twenty-four of the families, the parents have attended school for less than 12 years (averaging about 7 years of schooling). This group of parents are mostly monolingual Spanish speakers, and most of them have immigrated to the US and are holding factory or field work jobs. The other twenty-four families include parents who have completed a secondary school degree or more (average of about 13 years of formal schooling). The majority of these parents were bilingual, and they worked in a variety of jobs including technical and professional positions. The sample of families included in the family science workshop study also included mostly Mexican-descent families. The teachers were mostly European-American females. In the preschool study, the families were mostly middle-class and European-American; a small number of children were of Mexican-descent. The preschool teachers included 2 Latina women, 3 European-American women, and one African-American man. Findings and Implications Research Question1: What does "science talk" look like in everyday conversations in Mexican descent families? Do these conversations differ (e.g., in frequency of children's questions, frequency of parents' explanations, content of parents' explanations) depending on the educational background of the parents? Pulling together the findings of all of these studies, there are several important themes that emerge as answers to our first set of research questions. First, in all of the settings that we have observed there is evidence that preschool and early school-age children engage in "science talk" at home and in the classroom. Children's participation in such talk may involve asking causal questions about puzzling events, listening to parents' or teachers' explanations for how something works, or collaborating with adults or other children in figuring out an explanation. Strikingly, we found these sorts of conversations to occur even in families where parents' have very few years of formal school experience. In the diary study that we conducted parents reported that their children's questions covered a wide range of topics including the biological and physical sciences. With these questions children open up a conversation through which they are likely to learn more about a topic that interests them. We found that parents are generally quite open to these questions and that they often try to provide explanations or to model the processes by which one might find the answer to a question. Unlike the diary findings, our study of family conversations in the museum uncovered a difference in parents' explanations as a function of their educational background. Parents with more years of formal schooling were likely to provide more science explanations in the museum. This is not surprising, given the previous experiences of the two groups of parents. In fact, our interview data uncovered two interesting findings that help to clarify the explanation results. When asked about their goals for the visit to the museum, parents with higher formal education were likely to talk about their children learning content from the exhibits, while parents with lower formal education were likely to talk about their children seeing what museums are like. In addition, the lower education group of families were far less experienced with museums and for many this was their very first visit to a museum of any kind. This information suggests that parents' differential focus on the science content is likely to be an outgrowth of their perspective on what is new about this experience—either particular exhibit content, or the museum as a whole. Another obvious way that the two groups of families differ is that many of those with lower education were monolingual Spanish-speakers. Although we gave them a Spanish guide to the museum, most of the signs in the museum are in English only; Spanish speaking parents may not have understood as much about the exhibits because of this language barrier. These findings led us to follow up with a home visit so that we can explore the science conversations that might occur in a setting that is familiar to both groups of families. The purpose of the home visit was to devise a "museum-like" experience that could be carried out at home. We used a flotation activity in which families were given a large tub of water and a number of different objects. They were asked to first guess which things would float and which would sink, and then to test out their ideas to see what actually floats and sinks. We are still in the process of coding the data from this part of the study, but our preliminary findings are very intriguing. We are finding that parents from both education groups are making predictions and supporting them with scientfically relevant ideas. None of the parents from either group give a full scientific explanation in terms of density of objects (Density = Mass x Volume) and how it compares with the density of water. Many parents do mention density-relevant properties such as weight, size, and type of material that objects are made of. What we have found is that parents from the higher education and lower education groups are equally likely to discuss these density-relevant properties. Parents with more formal education, however, are likely to focus specifically on weight, while parents with less formal education are likely to mention a variety of different properties. It seems that schooling has led parents to remember one part of the concept of density (weight, which is related to mass) and to communicate that idea to their children. The explanation is somewhat incomplete, however, and the predictions that are based on weight alone often fail. The parents with less education, on the other hand, seem to be engaging with their children in an authentic exploration of a variety of factors that are relevant to the concept of density. This exploration could be even more valuable than being given a consistent explanation that is not quite right. It will be very interesting to complete the coding and analysis of these data to see if this pattern of findings holds. Research Question 2: What does "science talk" look like in preschool and early elementary classrooms? If teachers know more about the characteristics of science talk in family, how might they make use of this information as a "fund of knowledge" regarding children's ideas, interests, and understanding of particular topics? Our findings in the family science workshop study and the preschool study again demonstrate young children's creative inquiry around science concepts. In both settings, we saw again that children's spontaneous questions and comments about science express their curiosity about science, and parents and teachers in these studies often engaged with children in very productive explorations of the scientific world. In the preschool study, teachers developed child-directed curriculum about snakes and hatching chicks, and made use of children's interests and experiences to allow the curriculum to expand in interesting ways (see Callanan, Coto, Miranda, Striffler, Allen, Crandall, & Murphy, 2001). We decided to explore the link between children's questions and teachers' curriculum in the Family Science study, on which we collaborated with Life Lab Science at UC Santa Cruz and the LASERS project (Language Acquisition through Science Education for Rural Schools), a CREDE project headed up by Professor Trish Stoddart. As one part of the project, LASERS teachers took a training workshop with Life Lab Science staff, learning how to use their curriculum and materials to run Family Science workshops. Curriculum was available for four garden-based science workshops, on Bugs, Seeds, Soil, and Plants. Teachers arranged for two workshops within their schools, inviting parents and children from their school population. The schools involved serve a large low-income Spanish-speaking population. Our project involved participating and observing during the workshops, calling parents a few days later to ask about how children had expressed their questions and ideas at home after the workshop, meeting with teachers to discuss the parents' reports, and then participating and observing the second workshop. As in our previous work, children in this study asked many spontaneous questions about the material that they had explored in the Family Science workshops, and extended what they had learned into new situations (see Callanan, Alba-Speyer, & Tenenbaum, 2000). Our next step was to brainstorm with teachers, sharing the information about children's questions, and attempting to think of ways to build on children's ideas. This phase of the study was promising in that virtually all of the teachers were motivated to make links between children's individual ideas . Some teachers were quite successful in making use of children's ideas to tailor the second workshop session, despite the fact that the topic was different and that not all families returned for the second session. If linking children's questions to the new curriculum could occur in this setting, then having it happen in the classroom seems even more promising. Conclusions/Recommendations for Future Research This research has deepened our understanding of the nature of "science talk" in informal family conversations. It has also expanded this exploration by working with families of Mexican descent who have not only been underrepresented in this type of work, but suggested to be less likely to engage children in explanatory talk or inquiry. Contrary to these suggestions, we have found in several settings that families engage in science talk. Not surprisingly, parents' educational background is related to their explanatory talk with children. But this education difference does not seem to be apparent as long as the activity setting is familiar and comfortable to the families. Further analysis of the present data along with future studies on these topics is needed for a full understanding of the impact of parents' education and activity setting on science talk. Further exploration of ways of linking home and school through individual children's questions would also be promising. There are important implications of these findings for current educational practice. First, teachers must be made aware of how widespread these informal science conversations are in children's everyday activities. Building on this foundation can help teachers to connect with children in more meaningful ways. Individual children's interests and questions are known by their families far better than by their teachers. Finding ways to forge links between home and school has been a goal of many educational researchers. Our initial attempt to make such a link through informing teachers of children's questions shows promise. It is, of course, more challenging to find ways to make these links without the presence of a researcher as mediator. We are hopeful that these findings may encourage teachers to be creative about finding and supporting links with parents that are bidirectional — parents as experts on their children's learning can be a great resource to teachers. Appendix A: Publications, Papers, and Presentations Based on Findings In preparation or submitted Callanan, M., Pérez-Granados, D., Barajas, N., & Goldberg, J. (under revision). "Why" questions in Mexican-descent children's conversations with parents. Kelemen, D., Callanan, M., Kasler, K., Rosset, E., & Perez-Granados, D. (in preparation). Why things happen: Teleological explanation in Mexican-descent parent-child conversations. Esterly, J., & Callanan, M. (in preparation). Explanations about floating and sinking in Mexican-descent families' conversations. Esterly, J., Scott, C., Trinidad, T., Olivares, E., & Callanan, M. (submitted). Parent-child conversations about floatation. Paper submitted to the meetings of the American Educational Research Association. Kelemen, D., Callanan, M., Kasler, K., Rosset, E., & Perez-Granados, D. (submitted). Why Things Happen: Teleological Explanation in Mexican-descent Parent-Child Conversations. Paper submitted to International Conference on Infant Studies. Callanan, M. (submitted) The role of explanation in scientific meaning-making. Paper submitted as part of symposium, Multiple Perspectives on Scientific Meaning-Making, to the meetings of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. 2000-2001 Tenenbaum, H., Callanan, M., Alba-Speyer, C., & Sandoval, L. (2001). Parent-Child Science Conversations in Mexican-Descent Families: Educational Background, Activity, and Goals as Moderators. To appear in special issue of Hispanic Journal of the Behavioral Sciences. Callanan, M., & Jipson, J. (2001). Explanatory conversations and young children's developing scientific literacy. In K. Crowley, C. Schunn, & T. Okada (Eds.), Designing for Science: Implications from Everyday, Classroom, and Professional Settings (pp. 21-49). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Callanan, M., Coto, P., Miranda, L., Striffler, A., Allen, J., Crandall, C., & Murphy, C. (2001). Preschool science: Contextualizing curriculum with children's questions and family stories. In E. McIntyre, A. Rosebery, & N. González (Eds.), Classroom Diversity: Connecting Curriculum to Students' Lives (pp. 61-75). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Callanan, M., Alba-Speyer, C., & Tenenbaum, H. (2000). Linking home and school through children's questions that followed family science workshops. Research Brief #8, Center for Education, Diversity, and Excellence (CREDE). 1997-1999 Tenenbaum & Alba-Speyer, (1999). Parent-Child Conversations in a Museum and Development of Scientific Literacy. Symposium Paper presented at meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Albuquerque, NM, April.. Callanan, M. & Cervantes, C. (1999). Parent-Child Conversations about Science. Presented as part of symposium, "Parents as Intellectuals; Parents as Experts," at the meetings of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, April. Callanan, M. (1998). Questions and Explanations: Young Children's Developing Scientific Literacy, Invited presentation at conference on "Designing for Science", University of Pittsburgh and LRDC. Callanan, M. (1998). Parent-Child Conversations as a Context for Children's Developing Theories, Invited talk, Developmental Psychology Colloquium, University of California, Berkeley. Pérez-Granados, D. R, & Callanan, M. A. (1997). Parents and siblings as early resources for young children's learning in Mexican-descent families. Hispanic Journal of the Behavioral Sciences, 19, 3-33. Callanan, M., Perez-Granados, D., Jipson, J., &Barajas, N. (1997). Everyday conversations about science: Questions as contexts for theory development. Paper presented at meetings of Society for Research in Child Development, Washington, DC, April.