Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 8, Issue 1, Article 3 (June, 2007) Beverley JANE and Jill ROBBINS Intergenerational learning: grandparents teaching everyday concepts in science and technology Previous Contents Next

Discussion of the findings from a socio-cultural perspective

A socio-cultural analysis of the data generated indicates that there are several ways in which grandparents are supporting young children's scientific and technological thinking and learning. The findings are addressed in the following three sections:

• Transformational issues (the personal lens);
• Relationships and collaboration (the interpersonal lens); and
• Valued experiences and cultural tools (the community/contextual lens).

Transformational issues (the personal lens)

Consistent with Rogoff (2003), while focusing on a particular child or grandparent, we also drew on information available to us through the interpersonal or community/cultural lens. We found that the children in the study are developing rich, everyday concepts and creative thinking through their participation in shared, informal activities with their grandparents. Through participation in simple, but meaningful activities, such as gardening, cooking, mending, cleaning, playing in the sandpit, going to the beach, walking in the park, and having a picnic, children's understanding is being developed and transformed through participation in these mutually enjoyable and relevant activities. These spontaneous, everyday concepts provide the concrete experiences necessary for activating the scientific concepts they will encounter at school. Below we present several examples that illustrate the kind of activities that help children develop everyday concepts that involve science or technology.

Example 1. Oliver (5 years and 9 months) demonstrates he has learned about processes and systems, and has developed certain technological understandings. During a visit by his grandparents from England, he showed them how to log on to a computer and send each other emails. The grandparents made this entry in their journal:

He showed us the computer and we were surprised that he knew how to log onto the computer for himself. He said that Mummy had showed him but that he wasn't allowed to go on the computer by himself. We are going to let him log onto the computer for us when we record our journal (Grandparents Peter & Kathleen)

By sharing this information with his grandmother, Oliver was not only able to demonstrate and teach her his developing computer skills, but he was also preparing for future engagement in similar activities on her return to England.

Figure 1: Oliver and his grandmother logging on to the computer

Example 2. The following extract from a grandmother's journal illustrates how Annika (2 years old) has learned to operate a simple machine.

Each visit to my parents' (great grandparents) home, Annika carefully will bring this piano music box over to my father to hold. She then opens the top, stands with hands behind back and listens. After a few minutes she will (with her index finger) press the small lever to stop the music. My father has only pressed the lever once, to show her how it stopped; she obviously remembered. (Grandmother of Annika)

Transformational experiences such as these involving Oliver and Annika, are not only important in developing everyday concepts such as those of computers and switches, music boxes and levers, but more broadly they lay important foundations for their later development of abstract, scientific concepts such as 'systems' encountered in technology classes at school.

Example 3. Another grandmother, Margaret, who made a DVD to record the science and technology experiences she engaged in with her grandchildren, interspersed current footage of Owen (6 years) engaged in complex block building with footage of him completing puzzles at fifteen months. The concentration that Owen demonstrated as a toddler, supported at the time by his grandmother, has now transformed into the ability to build intricate constructions. In the process, and the accompanying talk with his grandmother, he is now demonstrating advanced technological skills of designing, making and appraising.

Example 4 . The following journal entry by the grandmother of Ethan (4 years) illustrates the transformation that is occurring in his thinking through experimentation and her support. Building on his fascination with the properties of light, his grandmother initiated several activities that involved exploring how light travels and behaves when it hits an object. By holding a mirror towards a window Ethan explored how light was reflected when the incoming sunlight hit the mirror. He quickly discovered that the angle of the mirror determined the position of the light beam on the wall. Furthermore, he talked with his grandmother about shadows, and the photograph below shows Ethan and his shadow early one morning. Several days later Ethan told her that his shadow was shorter now. This episode shows that his thinking has evolved to the point that he recognise that the length of his shadow changes. Significantly through these activities, his grandmother has been supporting Ethan's development of both everyday and scientific concepts.

Figure 2: Ethan and his long shadow

When viewed through the personal lens, each of the above examples illustrates the transformational nature of children's scientific and technological thinking. However, they also demonstrate the interweaving character of the personal, interpersonal and community/contextual. Although we might choose here to focus on individual children (personal focus of analysis), their thinking may not have evolved without interactions with their grandparents (interpersonal focus of analysis), or without specific cultural tools such as computers, music boxes, mirrors and blocks (community/contextual focus of analysis).

Relationships and collaboration (the interpersonal lens)

The interpersonal lens allows us to focus on what people are doing together and how learning is occurring 'between' them, rather than simply in an individual child. It also can highlight where thinking is moving from an intermental to and intramental level, as children increasingly internalise and reflect on the evolving understandings.

Example 4. A conversation with Ethan's grandmother, illustrates how there has been a shift from thinking occurring on the social plane (between people engaged in joint socio-cultural activity) to occurring on an individual plane (that is, within the child).

Ethan is in preschool now, and he's more independent in his thinking. For example, see that plant over there. A while ago, Ethan and I would have looked at the plant together and talked about it. He'd have asked me questions about it, and I would have told him about various parts of the tree. Now, he is noticing things before me, and drawing my attention to things... and telling me about them... (Grandmother Lois)

Example 5. The following extract, relating to Oliver's visit to the beach with his grandparents, illustrates how they are aware that his thinking is gradually evolving. While it would seem that, at present, his thinking is still at times occurring on an intermental level, their comment that his questions are becoming harder to answer, indicates that he has internalised the shared understandings built with them during previous experiences, and he can reflect on that understanding. Over time, his thinking has gradually shifted to the intramental level.

We went to the beach with Oliver and he wanted to know why there were dead jellyfish on the beach and why there were bits of glass that were really smooth. He loves asking questions and often you have to think pretty hard to come up with the right answer. One of the questions he asked was, 'Granddad, where does the sea go when the tide goes out?' When he was younger you knew that you would be able to answer all of his questions, but the older he gets the harder the questions get. ( Grandparents Peter & Kathleen).

These intergenerational interactions benefit not only the grandchildren, but grandparents as well, as the following example shows. "It's a big commitment, but they give us back so much. We wouldn't have it any other way" (Grandfather Mike). Similarly, Ethan's grandmother also reports on the 'special times' they share together: "Our time together is special. He relates to me in a way that is different from how he relates to others. We just enjoy being with each other - just spending time talking..."(Grandmother Lois). Such times of intergenerational sharing can be a form of relaxation and enjoyment for grandparents, and reinforces feelings of 'being wanted'. In addition, by engaging in joint everyday experiences, the grandparents' values become valued by the grandchild.

Valued experiences and cultural tools (the community/contextual lens)

Most grandparents in our study are signifying that they enjoy the time and activities with their grandchildren and also see it as important for the children to gain knowledge about their natural and physical world and the technologies that exist or can be created within them. This valuing of intergenerational activities exemplifies what Hedegaard (1998) wrote about the situated nature of learning and cognition, and the support that is given for culturally relevant activities. While supporting their grandchildren's explorations and activities, grandparents are often demonstrating what they see as important within their family context, or society in general. Margaret places great importance on her grandchildren's emerging interests in science, and has developed some 'science boxes' which she brings out when various grandchildren visit. Not all grandparents are so 'consciously' supporting the learning of science and technology understandings and skills. Most would not see themselves as knowledgeable in science and technology, nor are they aware of the embedded nature of learning, such as that evident in the following extracts.

Example 6.

Grandfather called in morning to take Jack and Nicholas to the park. Jack and other children inspected dead possum, possibly killed by car and noted the damage done and the dangers of walking out on the road (G. & J. Field - grandparents of Jack & Nicholas)

Example 7.

Went to a Mornington market with Oliver and got him a set of mini gardening tools. He has his own bit of garden and he and his grandma have spent a lot of time together in the garden, picking fruit and pulling up weeds (Grandparents Peter & Kathleen).

What is also evident in several of the journal entries by the grandparents is the cultural-historical nature of children's everyday thinking and activities. As a child actively participates in cooking with grandparents, reads a book together with other family members, or fixes a camera, the child draws on previous experiences undertaken by and with grandparents, and the conceptual links made directly with experiences her/his parent had as a child, or indirectly through the stories told by grandparents about when the child's parents were younger (Fleer & Robbins, 2004). The grandparents' 'voice' can also be heard in the voice of the parent (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986) even when the grandparent, or great grandparent, is no longer living, or as in this study, lives interstate or overseas. As Oliver's grandparents related: "It's great to see Oliver growing up. We can see our daughter in him, but ourselves, too."

Example 8. Likewise patterns of behaviour can often be seen across generations, as in the following journal entry by Annika's grandmother.

I pulled apart my Russian doll and Annika sat for several minutes, trying to put them back together. She placed them in a line with the 'head' parts in a row. This reminded me - when Anthea (Annika's mother) was this age she would line all her dolls and soft toys around the walls of the lounge room. (Grandmother of Annika)

Example 9. Another significant contextual issue was that of time. Not constrained by time factors that increasingly appear to impact on interactions between ‘parents’ and children, grandparents more frequently had the time to engage in unhurried activity with their grandchildren.

After returning from the park Jack (nearly five) and Grandpa drove off in the car to buy a sausage roll and pie and thence to Grandma's house to plant carrots and lettuces. Jack dug over soil and pulled out a number of worms. Grandma explained why worms were good for the garden and thus why we needed to put the worms back into the soil. Jack also asked why there were no mulberries on the tree. Grandma explained it wasn't the right time of the year and pointed out the tender shoots on the tree, which indicated the berries were coming and could be picked later in the year . (Grandparents of Jack)

Figure 3: Jack planting vegetables at his grandmother's house