From Seeing to Observing: How Parents and Children Learn to See Science in a Botanical Garden

How do children begin to make the transition from seeing the natural world to scientifically observing the natural world? This study explored how differences in parent conversational strategies and disciplinary knowledge impact children’s experience observing biological phenomena during shared informal learning. A total of 79 parent–child pairs with children ages 6–10 participated in a controlled study in which half of the parents used their natural conversational style and the other half were trained to use 4 conversational strategies during family observations of pollination in a botanical garden. Parents were also assigned to high- and low-knowledge groups according to their knowledge of pollination biology. Findings suggest that parents who received training used the conversational strategies more than parents who used their natural conversational style. Parents and children who knew more about pollination at the start of the study exhibited higher levels of disciplinary talk in the garden. However, the use of the conversational strategies also increased the amount of disciplinary talk in the garden. The extent to which families engaged in disciplinary talk in the garden predicted significant variance in what children learned from the experience. An extended example illustrates how shared family noticing and conversation may support learning to observe nature.