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Wednesday, 2 November 2011

This ARC Linkage Grant, with partners Scitech and Rio Tinto, focuses on understanding and improving parents' and young children's interest and engagement in science through the implementation of Scitech's newly developed Early Childhood Outreach program delivered to playgroups.

Titled "Small steps in science: Developing young children's science understanding through playgroup incursions", this research is the first to bring together the informal learning sector, the playgroup sector, and early childhood science experts to develop knowledge that will support science learning. A repeated case study design will be used to collect data from various playgroups, with research methods including observation, questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, home journals, focus group interviews and conversations with children. The specific research questions are:

1.      How can science incursions into community playgroups be structured to best promote young children's and parents' opportunities for involvement, exploration and understanding of science?

2.      How can science incursions into community playgroups be structured to best increase interactions between young children and their parents that build engagement and interest in science?

3.      How can the interaction between young children and their parents be extended beyond the incursion to maintain engagement in science?

This research is highly applicable as results will feed directly back into Scitech's Early Childhood Outreach program. This will be one of the first outreach programs to have a research base to inform the continuing development of the program. An additional application is exploring what science learning is transferred to the home as a consequence of participating in the program, and how engagement in science can be maintained at home. As the home is the first place of learning for all children, mechanisms to assist parents to engage children in science can promote this learning.

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