UNITE: Exposing Children to the Concept of Interconnectedness in a Museum Context

Le résumé fourni par la source

The concept of seemingly independent elements/entities in the world having a meaningful impact on each other is a hard concept to convey, even to adults. Because such objects that appear disconnected at first sight can actually be strongly associated, it is important for children to understand how their actions can affect the people and things around them. That is the premise of our work and something we would like to instill in children at the Discovery Museum of Virginia through the novel interconnected exhibits presented, with the common theme UNITE: Understanding Networks & Interconnectedness through Technology Exhibits. We describe UNITE's design—grounded in Interdependence Theory, with some adaptations to accommodate the distant, unidirectional, asynchronous nature of interconnectedness—and present how we anticipate that the unique setup will help children develop basic executive functions, such as perspective-taking, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. We then lay out how the exhibit satisfies the museum's educational requirements and present our assessment plan to evaluate the transferability of skills to new contexts beyond the museum.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.