Collaborative Research: Making Space for Story-Based Tinkering to Scaffold Early Informal Engineering Learning

协作研究：为基于故事的修补创造空间，为早期非正式工程学习提供支架

• 批准号: 1906808
• 负责人: David Uttal
• 金额: $ 39.63万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1906808&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Making; Space; Story

This project responds to calls to increase children's exposure and engagement in STEM at an early age. With the rise of the maker-movement, the informal and formal education sectors have witnessed a dramatic expansion of maker and tinkering spaces, programs, and curricula. This has happened in part because of the potential benefits of tinkering experiences to promote access and equity in engineering education. To realize these benefits, it is necessary to continue to make and iterate design and facilitation approaches that can deepen early engagement in disciplinary practices of engineering and other STEM-relevant skills. This project will investigate how stories can be integrated into informal STEM learning experiences for young children and their families. Stories can be especially effective because they bridge the knowledge and experiences young children and their caregivers bring to tinkering as well as the conversations and hands-on activities that can extend that knowledge. In addition, a unique contribution of the project is to test the hypothesis that stories can also facilitate spatial reasoning, by encouraging children to think about the spatial properties of their emerging structures. This project uses design-based research methods to advance knowledge and the evidence base for practices that engender story-based tinkering. Using conjecture mapping, the team will specify their initial ideas and how it will be evident that design/practices impact caregivers-child behaviors and learning outcomes. The team will consider the demographic characteristics, linguistic practices, and funds of knowledge of the participants to understand the design practices (resources, activities) being implemented and how they potentially facilitate learning. The outcome of each study/DBR cycle serves as inputs for questions and hypotheses in the next. A culturally diverse group of 300+ children ages 5 to 8 years old and their parents at Chicago Children's Museum's Tinkering Lab will participate in the study to examine the following key questions: (1) What design and facilitation approaches engage young children and their caregivers in creating their own engineering-rich tinkering stories? (2) How can museum exhibit design (e.g., models, interactive displays) and tinkering stories together engender spatial thinking, to further enrich early STEM learning opportunities? and (3) Do the tinkering stories children and their families tell support lasting STEM learning? As part of the overall iterative, design-based approach, the team will also field test the story-based tinkering approaches identified in the first cycles of DBR to be most promising. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. It will result in activities, exhibit components, and training resources that invite visitors' stories into open-ended problem-solving activities. It will advance understanding of mechanisms for encouraging engineering learning and spatial thinking through direct experience interacting with objects, and playful, scaffolded (guided) problem-solving activities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目对增加儿童的接触和较早的STEM参与的呼吁做出回应。随着制造商的兴起，非正式和正规的教育部门见证了制造商和修补空间，课程和课程的巨大扩展。这是由于修补经验的潜在好处来促进工程教育的获得和公平性。为了实现这些好处，有必要继续制作并迭代设计和促进方法，以加深对工程和其他与STEM相关的技能的纪律实践。该项目将调查如何将故事纳入幼儿及其家人的非正式STEM学习经历中。故事尤其有效，因为它们弥合了知识，并体验了幼儿及其照顾者带来修补，以及可以扩展这种知识的对话和动手活动。此外，该项目的独特贡献是检验以下假设：故事也可以通过鼓励儿童思考新兴结构的空间特性来促进空间推理。该项目使用基于设计的研究方法来推进知识和实践的证据基础，从而导致基于故事的修补。使用猜想映射，团队将指定他们的最初想法，以及如何显而易见的设计/实践会影响照顾者 - 孩子的行为和学习成果。团队将考虑参与者的人口特征，语言实践和知识的资金，以了解正在实施的设计实践（资源，活动）以及他们如何促进学习。每个研究/DBR周期的结果都是下一个问题和假设的输入。一个5至8岁的300多岁儿童的文化多样化小组，他们在芝加哥儿童博物馆修补实验室的父母将参加研究以研究以下关键问题：（1）哪些设计和促进方法让幼儿及其照顾者及其照顾者参与创建自己的工程工程富裕的故事？ （2）博物馆如何展示设计（例如，模型，交互式显示）和修补故事，共同使空间思考，以进一步丰富早期的STEM学习机会？ （3）孩子们及其家人的修补故事是否告诉持久的STEM学习？作为整体迭代，基于设计的方法的一部分，该团队还将在DBR第一个周期中确定的基于故事的修补方法进行现场测试。该项目由非正式的STEM学习（AISL）计划资助，该计划旨在推进对非正式环境中STEM学习的设计和开发的新方法和基于证据的理解。这将导致活动，展览组成部分和培训资源，使访客的故事参加开放式问题解决问题。它将通过直接与对象互动，顽皮（指导）解决问题的活动来鼓励工程学习和空间思维的机制，以提高人们的理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的审查标准来通过评估来支持的。