2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Child motivation and academic success research indicate that parents are critical to their child(ren)’s growth and development, both academically and socially, and often have a significant influence on the experiences and information children are exposed to and engage with. To date, little is known about the way parental engagement, including perceptions and reactions to difficulty or failure, might shape child interests and engagement. Further, how parents perceive and engage with children’s negative reactions to difficulty and perceived failure, to then shape their perspectives or mindsets, remains under-investigated. To address this gap, the current study explores child and parent perceptions of and reactions to failure within an out-of-school, home-based engineering program. Specifically, we sought to answer the following research questions, 1) How was failure perceived by participating children and parents? and 2) What was the subsequent action/reaction to that failure? Data were derived from over 20 post-program interviews with participating children and parents from years 1-4 of a home-based, elementary engineering program involving take-home kits and a culminating, self-identified engineering project. Transcripts were analyzed using inductive coding to identify themes related to the research questions regarding the perspectives on failure and how such perspectives shaped their experiences and attitudes toward the project going forward.

Findings illuminated a family focus on the end goal and less on the frustration that arises during the process. Children and parents reflected on moments of difficulty arising with more complicated kit projects, particularly those with intricate pieces and a greater number of steps in the process. These processes often held unforeseen obstacles (e.g., needing to orient material in a particular way), which led to initial design failures. Yet these moments gave rise to families aiming to complete all steps in the process, to then be able to evaluate the final product and determine where failures or obstacles might lie. Another theme revolved around immediacy and perceiving “not getting it right the first time” as a failure. Children perceived initial roadblocks or material malfunctions as failures, leading to frustration and discouragement. This prompted parents to engage in tactics like stepping away, taking extra time, or pushing on to the next steps to get to a result. Collaborative dialogue and promoting co-creation or teamwork also emerged as common tactics for working through frustration and perceived failure.

The results of this study shed light on the way that child-parent engagement and the tactics employed by parents may influence a child’s perseverance and willingness to work through difficulty. This research represents an entry point for investigating how parents perceive and react to failures and challenges, and how these reactions shape their communication around failure with their children. Such parental reaction and communication may shape children’s mindset development, perspectives, and engagement. Implications for family engagement and influence on child mindsets and interest in STEM and engineering content or learning are discussed.