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

Final Report Executive summary Principal Investigator: Maureen A. Callanan – University of California, Santa Cruz   Executive Summary Children's accomplishments in elementary and secondary science classrooms vary depending on their interest and experience with science topics. More troubling is the fact that science achievement also varies predictably depending on other factors, such as children's gender, native language, parent's education background, and socioeconomic level. Many researchers and educational advocates are interested in how these predictable variations can be overcome through early experiences with science. At the same time, researchers have been learning a great deal about how very early childhood is a time of exploration of the world in which children develop early understandings of certain 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. There were two basic sets of research questions that were addressed in this work: (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 this information as a "fund of knowledge" regarding children's ideas, interests, and understanding of particular topics? The research design used in these studies was a combination of videotaped interactions (both naturalistic observation and more structured activities), diary reports from parents, and interviews with parents and teachers. The videotaped data, which make up the bulk of the work, were collected in several different settings: family homes, children's museum and aquarium settings, preschool classrooms, and elementary school family science workshops. In these studies, the data were conversations about museum exhibits and science topics, and the unit of analysis usually consisted of questions and explanations that came up in the conversations. We coded questions and explanations in terms of their content, as well as the function they served in the conversations. All coding schemes were developed, revised, and tested for inter-coder reliability. Overall, the findings showed that parents and children engaged in many conversations about scientific topics, and that this was true regardless of the educational background of the parents. There were some suggestions that explanatory conversations were more frequent in families where parents had more formal education, but this was only true in some activity settings, and it seemed to be mediated by the goals of the parents in the activity. 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. 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.