The role of parents in the informal science education process of their children

Abstract

The objective of this study is to find out the parent's role in their children informal science education. Four factors were analyzed. These were the parents' (mother's or father's) understanding of science process, parent's involvement in their children's informal science education at home and outside and the interest of their children in taking up science related career. The first analysis focused on the parents' background such as where the aprent's live, their ethnicity, parents' age group, parents' level of education, parents' field of education, parents' occupation household income and frequency of visiting science centre and whether or not the background factors have significant influence towards all the four factors. The second analysis was to determine whether the parents' understanding on the science processes has any influence towards their involvement in the children's informal science education both at home and outside, and the children's interest in taking up science related careers. 200 parents and 200 children were selected as respondents for this study. The parents' involvement in formal science activities outside home was determined by observing their interaction with their children when they were using 3 interactive exhibits. Fill in questionnaire by the parents and face to face interview with the children were used in determining the background information, parents understanding of science processes, parents' involvement with their children at home and the interest pf children in taking up science careers. Data and information from the survey were compiled and analysed using the SPSS statistical package 11.5. The results show that only 33.55% of parents have an understanding about science processes. 52% of parents were involved in informal science activities with their children at home and 68.5% of parents were involved in informal science activities with their children outside the home. 52% of the children surveyed showed interest in taking science related careers in the future. Looking at the parents' background the findings indicate that the mother's field of education had the most significant influence on all the four factors studied i.e the parent's understanding in science processes (p=0.010), involvement in children's informal science activities at home (p=0.000) and outside home (p: 0.003) and the children's interest in taking science related careers (p:0.0039). The study further found that the father's background ha a moderate influence on all the 4 factors above compared to mothers. However, the father's working background is significantly (p=0.000) associated with their understanding of the science processes. The results also showed that parents' knowledge on the science processes was significantly related to their involvement in their children informal science education at home (p=0.006) and the children's interest in taking up science related career (p: 0.001)