"You gotta tell the camera": Advancing children's engineering learning opportunities through tinkering and digital storytelling.

This study addressed whether combining tinkering with digital storytelling (i.e., narrating and reflecting about experiences to an imagined audience) can engender engineering learning opportunities. Eighty-four families with 5- to 10-year-old (M = 7.69) children (48% female children; 57% White, 11% Asian, 6% Black) watched a video introducing a tinkering activity and were randomly assigned either to a digital storytelling condition or a no digital storytelling condition during tinkering. After tinkering, families reflected on their tinkering experience and were randomly assigned to either engage in digital storytelling or not. Children in the digital storytelling condition during tinkering spoke most to an imagined audience during tinkering, talked most about engineering at reflection, and remembered the most information about the experience weeks later.

Advancing opportunities for children's informal STEM learning transfer through parent-child narrative reflection.

This study examined whether families' conversational reflections after a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)-related experience in a museum promoted learning transfer. 63 children (M = 6.93 years; 30 girls; 57% White, 17.5% Latinx, 8% Asian, 5% African American, 9.5% mixed, 3% missing race/ethnicity) and their parents received an engineering demonstration, engaged in a building activity, and either recorded a photo-narrative reflection about their building experience or not at the museum. Thirty-six of these families completed a building activity with different materials weeks later at home, and the majority (77%) evidenced learning transfer of the building principle demonstrated at the museum. Those who participated in the photo-narrative reflection at the museum also showed learning transfer by talking more about STEM during the home building activity.

Museum program design supports parent-child engineering talk during tinkering and reminiscing.

This study focused on tinkering, a playful form of open-ended problem solving that is being widely adopted in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education as a way of encouraging children's engagement in disciplinary practices of engineering. Nevertheless, the design of exhibits and programs and the nature of children's interactions with adults can determine whether and to what extent tinkering engenders participation in engineering practices such as testing and redesign. Researchers and museum practitioners worked together using design-based research methods to develop and test tinkering programs that could best support engineering learning. Two of the programs specified what families' engineering projects should do and provided exhibit spaces for testing and iterating the design (i.e., function-focused programs), and two programs did not. A total of 61 families with 6- to 8-year-old children (Mage = 7.07 years; 25 female) were observed during one of the programs and when reminiscing immediately after tinkering. Parent-child interaction patterns associated with understanding and remembering events-parent-child joint hands-on engagement and joint talk-and engineering design process talk were measured. All four programs were similar in terms of parent-child joint engagement. Compared with families who did not participate in function-focused programs, families who did talked more about the engineering design process during tinkering and when reminiscing. Parent-child engineering talk during tinkering mediated the association between the program design and engineering talk when reminiscing. Implications for research on children's learning and museum practice are discussed.

Forgetting and symbolic insight: Delay improves children's use of a novel symbol.

To use a symbol, children must understand that the symbol stands for something in the world. This development has often been investigated in the model-room task in which children use a scale model to try to find a toy that is hidden in the room that the model represents. To succeed, children must acquire dual representation; they must put aside their understanding of the model as an object and focus more on what the model represents. Here we suggested that forgetting irrelevant details or misleading information may be an important part of acquiring and maintaining dual representation. Based on prior research showing that forgetting can promote insight in children and adults and that a small sample of 3-year-olds could improve on the model-room task with a delay, we hypothesized that taking a break during the model-room task would facilitate forgetting and hence symbolic insight. A total of 88 3-year-olds performed 8 trials of the model-room task. Half of the children received a 24-h delay after Trial 4, and half performed the 8 trials consecutively. Children who received a 24-h delay had better symbolic performance on the last 4 trials compared with children whose testing sessions occurred consecutively on 1 day, even when statistically controlling for the effects of learning over trials and memory on children's performance. This study provides strong initial evidence that a delay can promote symbolic insight in 3-year-old children.

The Development of Children's Gender-Science Stereotypes: A Meta-analysis of 5 Decades of U.S. Draw-A-Scientist Studies.

This meta-analysis, spanning 5 decades of Draw-A-Scientist studies, examined U.S. children's gender-science stereotypes linking science with men. These stereotypes should have weakened over time because women's representation in science has risen substantially in the United States, and mass media increasingly depict female scientists. Based on 78 studies (N = 20,860; grades K-12), children's drawings of scientists depicted female scientists more often in later decades, but less often among older children. Children's depictions of scientists therefore have become more gender diverse over time, but children still associate science with men as they grow older. These results may reflect that children observe more male than female scientists in their environments, even though women's representation in science has increased over time.

Promoting children's learning and transfer across informal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics learning experiences.

This study investigated ways to support young children's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning and transfer of knowledge across informal learning experiences in a museum. Participants were 64 4- to 8-year-old children (Mage = 6.55 years, SD = 1.44) and their parents. Families were observed working together to solve one engineering problem, and then immediately afterward children worked on their own to solve a second engineering problem. At the outset of the problem-solving activities, families were randomly assigned to receive engineering instructions, transfer instructions, both engineering and transfer instructions, or no instructions. Families who received engineering instructions-either alone or in combination with the transfer instructions-demonstrated greater understanding and use of the engineering principle of bracing compared with those who received only transfer instructions. Moreover, older children who received both engineering and transfer instructions were more successful when working on their own to solve a perceptually different engineering problem compared with older children who received only one set of instructions or no instructions. Implications of the work for developmental and learning science research and informal education practice are discussed.

Expert-novice differences in mental models of viruses, vaccines, and the causes of infectious disease.

Humans are exposed to viruses everywhere they live, play, and work. Yet people's beliefs about viruses may be confused or inaccurate, potentially impairing their understanding of scientific information. This study used semi-structured interviews to examine people's beliefs about viruses, vaccines, and the causes of infectious disease. We compared people at different levels of science expertise: middle school students, teachers, and professional virologists. The virologists described more entities involved in microbiological processes, how these entities behaved, and why. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed distinctions in the cognitive organization of several concepts, including infection and vaccination. For example, some students and teachers described viral replication in terms of cell division, independent of a host. Interestingly, most students held a mental model for vaccination in which the vaccine directly attacks a virus that is present in the body. Our findings have immediate implications for how to communicate about infectious disease to young people.

Conversation and Object Manipulation Influence Children's Learning in a Museum.

The effects of parent-child conversation and object manipulation on children's learning, transfer of knowledge, and memory were examined in two museum exhibits and conversations recorded at home. Seventy-eight children (Mage  = 4.9) and their parents were randomly assigned to receive conversation cards featuring elaborative questions about exhibit objects, the physical objects themselves, both, or neither, before their exhibit visits. Dyads who received the cards engaged in more elaborative talk and joint nonverbal activities with objects in the first exhibit than those who did not. Dyads who received objects engaged in the most parent-child joint talk. Results also illustrate transfer of information across exhibits and from museum to home. Implications for understanding mechanisms of informal learning and transfer are discussed.

Looking Ahead: Advancing Measurement and Analysis of the Block Design Test Using Technology and Artificial Intelligence.

The block design test (BDT) has been used for over a century in research and clinical contexts as a measure of spatial cognition, both as a singular ability and as part of more comprehensive intelligence assessment. Traditionally, the BDT has been scored using methods that do not reflect the full potential of individual differences that could be measured by the test. Recent advancements in technology, including eye-tracking, embedded sensor systems, and artificial intelligence, have provided new opportunities to measure and analyze data from the BDT. In this methodological review, we outline the information that BDT can assess, review several recent advancements in measurement and analytic methods, discuss potential future uses of these methods, and advocate for further research using these methods.

How Can We Best Assess Spatial Skills? Practical and Conceptual Challenges.

Spatial thinking skills are associated with performance, persistence, and achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) school subjects. Because STEM knowledge and skills are integral to developing a well-trained workforce within and beyond STEM, spatial skills have become a major focus of cognitive, developmental, and educational research. However, these efforts are greatly hampered by the current lack of access to reliable, valid, and well-normed spatial tests. Although there are hundreds of spatial tests, they are often hard to access and use, and information about their psychometric properties is frequently lacking. Additional problems include (1) substantial disagreement about what different spatial tests measure-even two tests with similar names may measure very different constructs; (2) the inability to measure some STEM-relevant spatial skills by any existing tests; and (3) many tests only being available for specific age groups. The first part of this report delineates these problems, as documented in a series of structured and open-ended interviews and surveys with colleagues. The second part outlines a roadmap for addressing the problems. We present possibilities for developing shared testing systems that would allow researchers to test many participants through the internet. We discuss technological innovations, such as virtual reality, which could facilitate the testing of navigation and other spatial skills. Developing a bank of testing resources will empower researchers and educators to explore and support spatial thinking in their disciplines, as well as drive the development of a comprehensive and coherent theoretical understanding of spatial thinking.

Finding faults: analogical comparison supports spatial concept learning in geoscience.

A central issue in education is how to support the spatial thinking involved in learning science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We investigated whether and how the cognitive process of analogical comparison supports learning of a basic spatial concept in geoscience, fault. Because of the high variability in the appearance of faults, it may be difficult for students to learn the category-relevant spatial structure. There is abundant evidence that comparing analogous examples can help students gain insight into important category-defining features (Gentner in Cogn Sci 34(5):752-775, 2010). Further, comparing high-similarity pairs can be especially effective at revealing key differences (Sagi et al. 2012). Across three experiments, we tested whether comparison of visually similar contrasting examples would help students learn the fault concept. Our main findings were that participants performed better at identifying faults when they (1) compared contrasting (fault/no fault) cases versus viewing each case separately (Experiment 1), (2) compared similar as opposed to dissimilar contrasting cases early in learning (Experiment 2), and (3) viewed a contrasting pair of schematic block diagrams as opposed to a single block diagram of a fault as part of an instructional text (Experiment 3). These results suggest that comparison of visually similar contrasting cases helped distinguish category-relevant from category-irrelevant features for participants. When such comparisons occurred early in learning, participants were more likely to form an accurate conceptual representation. Thus, analogical comparison of images may provide one powerful way to enhance spatial learning in geoscience and other STEM disciplines.

Learning what children know about space from looking at their hands: the added value of gesture in spatial communication.

This article examines two issues: the role of gesture in the communication of spatial information and the relation between communication and mental representation. Children (8-10 years) and adults walked through a space to learn the locations of six hidden toy animals and then explained the space to another person. In Study 1, older children and adults typically gestured when describing the space and rarely provided spatial information in speech without also providing the information in gesture. However, few 8-year-olds communicated spatial information in speech or gesture. Studies 2 and 3 showed that 8-year-olds did understand the spatial arrangement of the animals and could communicate spatial information if prompted to use their hands. Taken together, these results indicate that gesture is important for conveying spatial relations at all ages and, as such, provides us with a more complete picture of what children do and do not know about communicating spatial relations.

Examining the relations between spatial skills and mathematical performance: A meta-analysis.

Much recent research has focused on the relation between spatial skills and mathematical skills, which has resulted in widely reported links between these two skill sets. However, the magnitude of this relation is unclear. Furthermore, it is of interest whether this relation differs in size based on key demographic variables, such as gender and grade-level, and the extent to which this relation can be accounted for by shared domain-general reasoning skills across the two domains. Here we present the results of two meta-analytic studies synthesizing the findings from 45 articles to identify the magnitude of the relation, as well as potential moderators and mediators. The first meta-analysis employed correlated and hierarchical effects meta-regression models to examine the magnitude of the relation between spatial and mathematical skills, and to understand the effect of gender and grade-level on the association. The second meta-analysis employed meta-analytic structural equation modeling to determine how domain-general reasoning skills, specifically fluid reasoning and verbal skills, influence the relationship. Results revealed a positive moderate association between spatial and mathematical skills (r = .36, robust standard error = 0.035, τ2 = 0.039). However, no significant effect of gender or grade-level on the association was found. Additionally, we found that fluid reasoning and verbal skills mediated the relationship between spatial skills and mathematical skills, but a unique relation between the spatial and mathematical skills remained. Implications of these findings include advancing our understanding for how to leverage and bolster students' spatial skills as a mechanism for improving mathematical outcomes.

Transfer from spatial education to verbal reasoning and prediction of transfer from learning-related neural change.

Current debate surrounds the promise of neuroscience for education, including whether learning-related neural changes can predict learning transfer better than traditional performance-based learning assessments. Longstanding debate in philosophy and psychology concerns the proposition that spatial processes underlie seemingly nonspatial/verbal reasoning (mental model theory). If so, education that fosters spatial cognition might improve verbal reasoning. Here, in a quasi-experimental design in real-world STEM classrooms, a curriculum devised to foster spatial cognition yielded transfer to improved verbal reasoning. Further indicating a spatial basis for verbal transfer, students' spatial cognition gains predicted and mediated their reasoning improvement. Longitudinal fMRI detected learning-related changes in neural activity, connectivity, and representational similarity in spatial cognition-implicated regions. Neural changes predicted and mediated learning transfer. Ensemble modeling demonstrated better prediction of transfer from neural change than from traditional measures (tests and grades). Results support in-school "spatial education" and suggest that neural change can inform future development of transferable curricula.

Tinkering With Testing: Understanding How Museum Program Design Advances Engineering Learning Opportunities for Children.

Using a design-based research approach, we studied ways to advance opportunities for children and families to engage in engineering design practices in an informal educational setting. 213 families with 5-11-year-old children were observed as they visited a tinkering exhibit at a children's museum during one of three iterations of a program posing an engineering design challenge. Children's narrative reflections about their experience were recorded immediately after tinkering. Across iterations of the program, changes to the exhibit design and facilitation provided by museum staff corresponded to increased families' engagement in key engineering practices. In the latter two cycles of the program, families engaged in the most testing, and in turn, redesigning. Further, in the latter cycles, the more children engaged in testing and retesting during tinkering, the more their narratives contained engineering-related content. The results advance understanding and the evidence base for educational practices that can promote engineering learning opportunities for children.

Everyday scale errors.

Young children occasionally make scale errors- they attempt to fit their bodies into extremely small objects or attempt to fit a larger object into another, tiny, object. For example, a child might try to sit in a dollhouse-sized chair or try to stuff a large doll into it. Scale error research was originally motivated by parents' and researchers' informal accounts of these behaviors. However, scale errors have only been documented using laboratory procedures designed to promote their occurrence. To formally document the occurrence of scale errors in everyday settings, we posted a survey on the internet. Across two studies, participants reported many examples of everyday scale errors that are similar to those observed in our labs and were committed by children of the same age. These findings establish that scale errors occur in the course of children's daily lives, lending further support to the account that these behaviors stem from general aspects of visual processing.

Learning fine-grained and category information in navigable real-world space.

Spatial judgments are affected by both fine-grained and categorical knowledge. We investigated whether, and how, the two forms of knowledge are learned in real-world, navigable space, as well as the time course of learning each type of knowledge. Participants were Northwestern University undergraduates who estimated the locations of buildings and other landmarks on campus. The Northwestern campus is roughly divided into three regions whose borders are not easy to discern, either from a map or by navigation. Nevertheless, students often refer to these regions linguistically and use them when making housing decisions, choosing classes, and so forth. We found that knowledge of both the fine-grained configuration of locations and the regional distinctions increased with time. However, regional influences on judgments occurred later in students' time on campus. Consequently, computed distances across the nonexistent border between north and south campus locations became more biased with time. The results have implications for understanding how spatial representations develop in navigable environments.

Situating space: using a discipline-focused lens to examine spatial thinking skills.

Spatial skills are an important component of success in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. A majority of what we know about spatial skills today is a result of more than 100 years of research focused on understanding and identifying the kinds of skills that make up this skill set. Over the last two decades, the field has recognized that, unlike the spatial skills measured by psychometric tests developed by psychology researchers, the spatial problems faced by STEM experts vary widely and are multifaceted. Thus, many psychological researchers have embraced an interdisciplinary approach to studying spatial thinking with the aim of understanding the nature of this skill set as it occurs within STEM disciplines. In a parallel effort, discipline-based education researchers specializing in STEM domains have focused much of their research on understanding how to bolster students' skills in completing domain-specific spatial tasks. In this paper, we discuss four lessons learned from these two programs of research to enhance the field's understanding of spatial thinking in STEM domains. We demonstrate each contribution by aligning findings from research on three distinct STEM disciplines: structural geology, surgery, and organic chemistry. Lastly, we discuss the potential implications of these contributions to STEM education.

Spatial activity participation in childhood and adolescence: consistency and relations to spatial thinking in adolescence.

BACKGROUND: Prior research has revealed positive effects of spatial activity participation (e.g., playing with blocks, sports) on current and future spatial skills. However, research has not examined the degree to which spatial activity participation remains stable over time, and little is known about how participating in spatial activities at multiple points in development impacts spatial thinking. In this study, adolescents completed measures of spatial thinking and questionnaires assessing their current and previous participation in spatial activities. RESULTS: Participation in childhood spatial activities predicted adolescent spatial activity participation, and the relation was stronger for females than for males. Adolescents' current participation in spatial activities predicted spatial thinking skills, whereas participation in childhood spatial activities predicted adolescents' spatial habits of mind, even when accounting for factors such as gender and academic performance. No cumulative benefit was incurred due to participating in spatial activities in both childhood and adolescence, and a lack of spatial activities in childhood was not made up for by later spatial activity participation. CONCLUSIONS: These findings reveal a consistently positive relationship in spatial activity participation between childhood and adolescence. Results highlight the importance of participating in spatial activities during childhood, and underscore the differential impact that participation in spatial activities during childhood versus adolescence has on different facets of adolescents' spatial thinking. Implications for the timing of interventions is discussed.

Developmental changes in children's understanding of the similarity between photographs and their referents.

In a series of three experiments, we investigated the development of children's understanding of the similarities between photographs and their referents. Based on prior work on the development of analogical understanding (e.g. Gentner & Rattermann, 1991), we suggest that the appreciation of this relation involves multiple levels. Photographs are similar to their referents both in terms of the constituent objects and in terms of the relations among these objects. We predicted that children would appreciate object similarity (whether photographs depict the same objects as in the referent scene) before they would appreciate relational similarity (whether photographs depict the objects in the same spatial positions as in the referent scene). To test this hypothesis, we presented 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old children and adults with several candidate photographs of an arrangement of objects. Participants were asked to choose which of the photographs was 'the same' as the arrangement. We manipulated the types of information the photographs preserved about the referent objects. One set of photographs did not preserve the object properties of the scene. Another set of photographs preserved the object properties of the scene, but not the relational similarity, such that the original objects were depicted but occupied different spatial positions in the arrangement. As predicted, younger children based their choices of the photographs largely on object similarity, whereas older children and adults also took relational similarity into account. Results are discussed in terms of the development of children's appreciation of different levels of similarity.