Home science interactions and their relation to children's science core knowledge in preschool

A limited body of work has examined the nature and scope of young children's science-related activities outside of the school context, and thus there is little understanding or consensus regarding what comprises the home science environment (HSE; e.g., interactions, activities, resources) and how specific factors of the HSE relate to children's science performance. The two primary goals of this study were to (a) examine the factor structure of a parent-report measure of home science interactions and (b) evaluate how these factors relate to the science core knowledge of young children from families with low incomes. A total of 125 families with children aged 3 to 5 years (52 girls) participated in the study. Children were assessed on a measure of science core knowledge, and parents completed a brief questionnaire on their home science interactions that included questions pertaining to both home science disciplinary core idea (DCI) engagement and home science and engineering practice (SEP) engagement. Findings revealed that although separating home science interactions into distinct DCI and SEP factors represented the data well, the best overall representation of home science interactions was a one-factor model that included only home DCI engagement items. In addition, home DCI engagement was significantly predictive of children's science core knowledge over and above a large group of covariates, including children's age, race/ethnicity, sex, and performance on math, executive function, and vocabulary tasks as well as their parents' education.