Explain This, Explore That: A Study of Parent–Child Interaction in a Children's Museum

Abstract

Parents visiting a gear exhibit at a children's museum were instructed to encourage their children (N = 65; ages 4–6) to explain, explore, or engage as usual. Instructions led to different patterns of play at the exhibit: Encouragement to explain led to greater discussion of gear mechanisms, whereas encouragement to explore led to more time connecting gears. In the explain condition, parents’ questions predicted their children's discussion and further testing of gears. Questions also predicted the amount of time children spent on a follow‐up task. Parents’ exploration predicted an increase in exploration by their children. These data indicate that minimal interventions impact parent–child interaction at a museum exhibit and that prompts to explore or explain uniquely influence parent and child behavior.

Exploration, Explanation, and Parent–Child Interaction in Museums

“…Parents who are encouraged to use more elaborative talk about science in informal settings, including generating explanations and asking open‐ended questions, have children who seem to be more engaged with play at the exhibit and who remember more from their museum experience at a later date (Benjamin, Haden, & Wilkerson, ; Haden et al, ; Jant, Haden, Uttal, & Babcock, ). Similarly, Willard et al () found that when parents were given conversation cards suggesting that they encourage their children to generate explanations in a gear exhibit, they were more likely to talk about causal mechanisms of the gears. In addition, the frequency of parents' explanatory questions predicted children's testing of gear machines and time spent building their own machines in a follow‐up task.…”

“…Children's exploration often leads them to seek and find explanations (Bonawitz, van Schijndel, Friel, & Schulz, ; Legare, ; Mills, Legare, Bills, & Mejias, ). Similarly, explanatory talk often leads to further exploration (Willard et al, ). Here we seek to document the complex dynamics between explanation and exploration in the context of parent–child interaction.…”

“…As another example, Van Schijndel et al () showed that parents can be instructed to scaffold their children's exploratory behaviors, and brief interventions on the part of museums could be used to support parents in supporting their children's exploration. Similarly, Willard et al () gave parents minimal interventions using conversation cards which suggested that they encourage their children to explore a gear exhibit. Children encouraged by their parents to explore spent more time making connections among gears and building more complex machines compared to baseline interaction.…”

“…In previous research, we have examined explaining and exploring in the context of parent–child interaction in children's museums using a minimal intervention design (Willard et al, ). The results were promising in showing that prompts for parents to encourage exploring and explaining led to distinct but fruitful activity for young children.…”

“…To do this, we first describe the follow‐up measures and how we coded them. We used a set of tasks on children's understanding of gears that have been used elsewhere (Legare & Lombrozo, ; Willard et al, ). In addition to replicating several of the coding schemes used in these papers, we designed new coding schemes, particularly to examine children's causal thinking in their constructions.…”