Children's Information-Seeking Study - Pre-conference Workshop Grant

This is a final report for a preconference workshop grant (project #274166 - Children?s Information Seeking Study - Pre-conference Workshop Grant), which was part of the ongoing FINNUT Young Researcher Talents project: Children's Information-Seeking: Its Development and Impacts?on Learning (#254974) or ChInfoSeek for short. The goal of the current pre-conference project was to organize and host a Pre-Conference Workshop in connection with the Cognitive Developmental Society 2017 Biennial Conference, in Portland, Oregon in October 2017. The pre-conference workshop entitled "Question Asking in Childhood: Development, Continuity, and Constraints" has now been completed as planned. The workshop involved three overall aims in line with the overall ChInfoSeek project: (1) to bring together international researchers working on information seeking skills in childhood with a particular focus on researchers working to understand how children learn to elicit information from others through questions; (2) to share information about current research and projects?on this topic with researchers from different disciplines; and (3) to foster inter-disciplinary connections and stimulate interest in, and new research on, children's active and functional learning skills that are transferable across learning situations and contexts. We anticipated that the workshop would benefit the ChInfoSeek project in two ways: (1) by providing the opportunity to receive feedback on ongoing research efforts from international experts, contributing to the quality?of the scientific papers in the ChInfoSeek project; (2) by generating opportunities for new research collaborations. Overall, we also expected that this pre-conference would benefit the Norwegian institutions by developing the expertise of Norwegian researchers on the development and impacts of children?s active learning skills. All the above is expected to subsequently stimulate participation in the joint international endeavor of enhancing our understanding of how to support and improve the early capacity to learn in, especially for preschoolers at risk. The full-day pre-conference workshop, which ended with a small poster session, included 75 participants, including 15 presenters and discussants. The participants were from different fields and at different stages of their career pathways. The researchers from ChInfoSeek contributed to the program (talk and poster), as did our collaborators.

This application is part of the FINNUT Young Researcher Talent project: Children's Information-Seeking: Its Development and Impacts on Learning (#254974) or ChInfoSeek for short. ChInfoSeek extends previous research by addressing the ways in which early home learning experiences shape the developmental foundation and formation of children's emerging information-seeking strategies, how this development relates to socio-demographic background and to the children's future learning achievements and expectations. The goal of the current application is funding for the organization of a Pre-Conference Workshop in connection with the Cognitive Developmental Society upcoming 2017 Biennial Conference. The workshop has three aims which align with ChInfoSeek: (1) to bring together international researchers working on information seeking skills in childhood; (2) to share information about current research and projects on this topic with researchers from different disciplines; and (3) to foster inter-disciplinary connections and stimulate interest in, and new research on, children's active and functional learning skills that are transferable across learning situations and contexts. We anticipate that the workshop will benefit the ChInfoSeek project in two ways: (1) it will provide the opportunity to receive feedback on ongoing research efforts from international experts, contributing to the quality of the scientific papers in the ChInfoSeek project; (2) it will generate opportunities for new research collaborations. Moreover, this pre-conference will benefit the Norwegian institutions by developing the expertise of Norwegian researchers on the development and impacts of children?s active learning skills. It is expected that all of the above will subsequently stimulate participation in the joint international endeavor of enhancing our understanding of how to support and improve the early capacity to learn in, especially for preschoolers at risk.