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

Project 4.3 Overview Final Report Executive Summary Children's accomplishments in elementary and secondary science classrooms vary depending on their interest and experience with science topics. But science achievement also varies predictably with children's gender, native language, parent's education, and socioeconomic level. Can these variations can be overcome through early experiences with science? Researchers have been learning how very young children develop early understandings of concepts that can be linked to later science learning. This project focused on young children's "science talk," including causal questions and explanations in conversations with parents and teachers. (1) 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? (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 information about children's ideas, interests, and understanding? We gathered a combination of videotaped interactions (both naturalistic observation and more structured activities), diary reports from parents, and interviews with parents and teachers. The videotapes were collected in family homes, children's museum and aquarium settings, preschool classrooms, and elementary school family science workshops. Overall, parents and children engaged in many conversations about scientific topics, regardless of the educational background of the parents. To some degree, explanatory conversations were more frequent in families where parents had more formal education, but this was only true in some settings. In general, everyday conversation is a place where children and their parents puzzle at times over various events and ideas that they encounter as they go about the routines of their lives. At times, these conversations focus on topics that are relevant to science. The ways that parents communicate what they know and model figuring out what they don't know may give children important information about the world and how to understand it. These findings can give considerable guidance to early education teachers—of science and any other subject—about how to develop scientific concepts in young children through dialogue, and how to relate school activities to those of the home.