Link to full article, click here.
It has been well established that parents play an important role in their children’s early learning. Soo Hyeon Kim, Assistant Professor in the Department of Library and Information Science, (LIS) is investigating how use of technology might impact a parent’s ability to support home-based engineering design tasks.
Kim and co-author Amber Simpson (Binghamton-SUNY) conducted their study in order to examine the difference between early learning with and without technology. Their paper, “Parents’ epistemic supports during home-based engineering design tasks: opportunities and tensions through the use of technology” was published in the November 2023 issue of Educational Technology Research and Development.*
“Our findings highlight the importance of acknowledging parents as educators and leveraging the family interactional capital as important learning resources for engineering learning at home. However, our findings also suggest that parents who are not familiar with STEM concepts may experience more challenges to navigate epistemic uncertainties during their engagement with tech kits. We recommend the facilitation guides provided in at-home engineering design tasks front load parents with engineering and/or technology-related content and include specific examples of how parents can position children as problem solvers and encourage playful uncertainty during engineering design tasks with technology,” Kim said.
Leave a Reply