Parent Roles and Facilitation Strategies as Influenced by a Mobile-Based Technology During a Family Nature Hike

Abstract

Families use mobile technologies in many educational spaces, such as museums or other informal learning venues to support their social learning experience. This trend encourages parents to take on new facilitation roles during their children’s technologically driven learning experiences. This study provides an in-depth look at how one type of mobile technology shaped parent roles, facilitation, and family learning in an outdoor setting. The qualitative case study uses sociocultural learning theory with a lens toward parent roles during a mobile-based family learning experience in the outdoors to analyze the 1-hour hike of one case study family. Findings from a thematic analysis of the video data resulted in 6 parental roles embodied by the parents during their hike with an e-Trailguide. A secondary analysis provided evidence that the e-Trailguide facilitated collaborative observations of the natural world for the parents and children. Recommendations for mobile-based designs that support family, outdoor learning are included.

Note

1. Although there are several terms that are used in the informal research and environmental education literature to describe the learning that occurs between adults and youth, such as intergenerational learning (Duvall & Zint, 2007), where youth and unrelated elders learn and work together, the term family learning is used throughout this study to refer to the social learning processes that occur between parents/guardians and children within a related family group.

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this work was presented at the 2017 Visitor Studies Annual Conference in Columbus, OH. Thank you to the families at Shaver’s Creek who volunteered their time to help shape this study.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lucy R. McClain

Lucy R. McClain is the Science and Education Program Director at Penn State University’s Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center. She is an instructor in both Penn State’s Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management (RPTM) department and Science Education (SCIED) program. At Shaver’s Creek, she oversees the center’s K-12 school curriculum outreach and graduate assistant program. Her research interests include family science learning processes in the outdoors and mobile-based learning designs for outdoor spaces. Address correspondence to: Lucy R. McClain, Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center, 3400 Discovery Road, Petersburg, PA 16669, USA. E-mail: [email protected].