Museum program design supports parent-child engineering talk during tinkering and reminiscing

Area of Science:

• STEM Education
• Engineering Learning
• Museum Practice

Background:

• Tinkering is a playful problem-solving approach increasingly used in STEM education to foster engineering engagement.
• Exhibit and program design, along with adult-child interactions, influence the effectiveness of tinkering for engineering practices like testing and redesign.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how different tinkering program designs impact parent-child interactions and engineering design process talk.
• To determine if function-focused programs enhance children's participation in engineering practices.

Main Methods:

• Design-based research was used to develop and test four tinkering programs: two function-focused and two not.
• 61 families with 6-8 year olds were observed during programs and in post-tinkering reminiscence.
• Parent-child joint engagement, joint talk, and engineering design process talk were measured.

Main Results:

• All programs showed similar levels of parent-child joint engagement.
• Families in function-focused programs engaged in more engineering design process talk during and after the activity.
• Parent-child engineering talk during tinkering mediated the link between program design and later reflective talk.

Conclusions:

• Function-focused tinkering programs effectively promote engineering design process talk in families.
• Museum exhibit and program design can be optimized to better support engineering learning in children.
• Encouraging specific types of talk can enhance the educational impact of informal STEM learning experiences.