Learning about different teachers!

3- to 7-year-old children and their caregivers who are participating in Project GARDEN and are able to understand and answer questions in English. To join Project GARDEN, or to see which study your child can do next, visit childrenhelpingscience.com/garden, click "Start Now", and select your child's name under "Find studies for..."

Your child will complete two games about different teachers and the ways they may help children learn. In the first game, your child will watch four short videos of four different teachers. After watching each pair of videos, your child will answer some questions to help us figure out: What do kids think about teachers? In the second game, your child will watch two short videos of two different teachers with unique, digitalized toys in different ways. After watching each video, your child will be allowed to explore the two toys and answer some quick questions about how the two toys work.

In the first game, we are interested in understanding the factors children are sensitive to when they're learning from other people. Previous research indicates that children consider both the quantity and quality of teaching when assessing a teacher's helpfulness. Here, we explore whether children also factor in a teacher's attentiveness to individual student needs and goals.

In the second game, we are interested in learning about how different teaching scenarios can affect children's play and exploration. Children may be able to balance the efficiency of learning from a knowledgeable teacher's direct instruction, with potential opportunities to explore on their own and possibly uncover their own discoveries.

Both games in this study investigate how children's learning may be affected by their interactions with other people - such as their teachers. This is because a teacher's behaviors may in-turn influence children's decisions. Here, we hope to better understand how different teaching behaviors might affect children's preferences and behaviors when learning about the world.

20 minutes

After you finish the study, we will email you a $5 Amazon.com gift card within seven days. If you are unable to access Amazon.com from where you live, please let us know via email and we can send you a gift card that will work in your country. To be eligible for the gift card and certificate, (1) your child must be in the age range for this study, (2) English is (one of) your child's first language(s), (3) you need to submit a valid consent statement, (4) we need to see that there is a child with you during the experiment. If you or your child do not wish to complete the entire study or for some reason, we are unable to use your child's data, we will still send you and your child a gift card and certificate. Each child is eligible to participate to receive a gift card only once.