Spatial Language in Families’ Conversational Reflections About Museum Experiences

The hands-on and physical nature of children’s museum exhibits creates opportunities for families to engage in conversations that are rich in spatial language. Prior work points to the importance of spatial language use during museum experiences for children’s spatial skills. The ways families talk about experiences after they occur is also important in the learning process. Therefore, in this study we asked how families use spatial language in conversational reflections after experiencing exhibits and programs in a children’s museum. Families (N = 243) with a 6- 11-year-old child made recordings in which they talked about experiences they had in a tinkering exhibit and up to two other exhibits. Families reflected on their tinkering experiences when there was either open-ended tinkering programs, function-focused programs, or engineering-focused programs occurring in the museum’s Tinkering Lab exhibit. In comparison to families who reflected on open-ended tinkering programs, those who reflected on engineering-focused programs used more spatial language in their reflections. Furthermore, our analysis of families’ reflections about additional museum exhibits revealed that families used the most spatial language when they reflected on exhibits that engaged children in physical activity and navigation. Results suggest design features of informal learning experiences that may support spatial language in families’ reflections.