Caregiver-Child Communication of STEM concepts with Engineering Design Tasks (Fundamental)

Engaging in engineering design processes may serve as an everyday experience to support children's understanding and application of STEM concepts; yet, little is known how this may unfold between children and caregivers in out-of-school contexts. Therefore, in this exploratory study, we utilized an expanded version of the translation model developed by Lesh and colleagues [1] to examine family's communication of science and mathematics concepts within engineering design-based tasks. Participants in this study were seven caregiver-child dyads from four families. The data source for this study were self-recorded videos of each family engaged in various engineering design tasks, in which caregivers were positioned as collaborators and partners. We analyzed approximately 10 hours of videos that ranged from 35:24 to 1:06:31 minutes. We observed caregiver-child dyads communicate mathematics and science concepts and ideas through multiple representations (i.e., concrete, pictorial, symbolic, language, realistic, and gesture) and translations within and among representations (e.g., gesture-language, concrete-language) within the engineering process. In addition, we observed four purposes for the use of representational fluency of mathematics and science concepts between caregiver-child interactions throughout the engineering design process. The significance of this study lies in the new possibilities for children's development of mathematics and science concepts in out-of-school contexts while positioning caregivers in the role of educator.