Explanatoids: Gender-Sensitive Signage to Seed Science Talk in Public Places

Family Communications, Inc., Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

Children can develop a wealth of knowledge about science and technology from their everyday experience. When visiting museums, watching educational TV, surfing the Web, or reading science-oriented books, children are actively developing proto-scientific reasoning skills, nascent theories for scientific domains, knowledge of interesting science facts, knowledge about famous scientific narratives, and early ideas about what different kinds of scientists do in their professional work. When children encounter science instruction in elementary and middle school, when they dream about what they might do when they grow up, and when they make choices about the courses they want to take in high school and beyond, those with experience and interest practicing scientific and technical thinking are more likely to seek it out and to succeed. Virtually all children and their parents come equipped with the tools needed to cultivate early math or scientific literacy, but these conversations and activities need to start from a seed a simple observation, an unexpected outcome, a question. For families with high levels of scientific literacy and interest, these seeds can be sown from personal experience. Indeed, more than three quarters of scientists in a recent National Science Foundation survey reported developing their passion for science in early, out-of-school activities such as nature walks with their parents, family visits to museums, or taking apart radios or launching rockets at home. We have no doubt that museum-based and media-based informal science infrastructure will have a positive effect on scientific literacy and science achievement, but the biggest effects will be for those who already are most likely to enter the educational and professional pipe-line for science and technology--the children of families that go to museums, watch educational programming, and visit educational web sites. Interestingly, boys more than girls are most likely to reap these benefits within highly motivated families. There is evidence to suggest that parents are less likely to bring their daughters to science museums than their sons, and that even among museum-going families, parents were more than three times more likely to explain the science of an exhibit to boys than to girls (true even when the boys and girls were as young as one to three-years old). What of families who may not be as comfortable with or as interested in pursuing science? These parents, already less likely to visit science museums for family recreation, may also not be aware of how many "teachable moments" exist in everyday life to prompt conversations with their children about math, science and technology, and especially so if they're parents of girls. Building on a successful pilot project we propose to seed the development of scientific and technical literacy by developing, placing, and maintaining engaging gender-sensitive science-oriented signage in the places where the broadest cross-section of Pittsburgh's children and families gather. We call these signs "explanatoids." While science museums and science-oriented media are important forces for informal science education, children and their families must seek them out over other forms of leisure activity. In contrast, our explanatoids bring science to the people, in a way that includes girls fully in that outreach. We are asking for support for three years to develop our pilot work into a full-scale regional project that can be replicated elsewhere as a gender-sensitive model for enhancing math/science literacy within a community. The project will include the development and installation of gender-sensitive signage as well as the production of associated support materials for parents and teachers throughout the Southwest Pennsylvania region. The project will leverage unique partnerships already built between Family Communications, Inc. (producers of Mister Rogers Neighborhood), local foundations, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research & Development Center, Kennywood Amusement Park, The Pittsburgh Teachers Institute, The Pittsburgh Children's Museum, and The Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy. Formative and summative evaluation will provide quantitative and qualitative measures of the ways that the project (1) counters negative stereotypes about girls and women in math, science and technology; (2) enhances girls' interests and successful participation in those arenas in schooling and career aspirations; and (3) advances the recognition that math, science and technology are integral to the regions future economic well-being.