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“What Would Happen if Humans Disappeared from Earth?” Tracing and Visualizing Change in a Pre-School Child’s Domain-Related Curiosities

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Advances in Quantitative Ethnography (ICQE 2021)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1312))

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Abstract

The National Research Council reports on science education have discussed how children of preschool age demonstrate readiness for science. However, what is missing is a discussion of mechanisms and practices that can promote deep curiosity over a long period. In this self and quantitative ethnography, we explore family engagement with scientific thinking and content as it unfolded for a mother-son dyad during a 10-month period. Shah and her son Mihir (pseudonym) participated in ‘A Bedtime Curiosity’ (ABC) routine (designed by Shah) wherein the latter was encouraged to express an idea he was curious about, ask a question, and then co-explore possible answers by watching a short video, followed by discussion if requested. After thematically coding the set of questions (N = 123), we used epistemic network analysis (ENA) to identify and model the connections between his curiosity over time. Thereafter, we took advantage of the self-ethnography to reevaluate the qualitative and quantitative data as well as the entire routine from the perspective of both the parent-researcher and the participating child. This body of work is positioned to extend the literature on examining parent-child interactions to support children’s curiosity- a phenomenon that is crucial to child development.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded in part by the National Science Foundation (DRL-1661036, DRL-1713110), the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The opinions, findings, and conclusions do not reflect the views of the funding agencies, cooperating institutions, or other individuals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Elsevier Inc., Philadelphia, PA, 19103, USA

    Mamta Shah

  2. Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

    Amanda Barany

  3. University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Amanda Siebert-Evenstone

Authors
  1. Mamta Shah
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  2. Amanda Barany
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  3. Amanda Siebert-Evenstone
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Mamta Shah , Amanda Barany or Amanda Siebert-Evenstone .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Andrew R. Ruis

  2. Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, USA

    Seung B. Lee

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Shah, M., Barany, A., Siebert-Evenstone, A. (2021). “What Would Happen if Humans Disappeared from Earth?” Tracing and Visualizing Change in a Pre-School Child’s Domain-Related Curiosities. In: Ruis, A.R., Lee, S.B. (eds) Advances in Quantitative Ethnography. ICQE 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1312. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67788-6_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67788-6_16

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-67787-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-67788-6

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