A live demonstration to enhance interest and understanding in child development.

Concepts and methods in the field of child development are understood better when observed or experienced, as opposed to described in a standard textbook or lecture format. We describe a live demonstration ill which commonly-taught developmental phenomena (e.g., Piagetian concepts, gender understanding, theory-of-mind abilities) are performed in front of a large class by children of several different ages. Students observe developmental changes firsthand and gain an appreciation for the methodological difficulties of conducting research with children. An immediate evaluation of the demonstration showed significant cognitive gains in students' understanding of the observed concepts, and a long-term follow-up showed self-reported cognitive and motivational benefits.

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Instructors constantly strive to incorporate activities into the classroom that will increase student engagement and enhance understanding of course material. Many suggestions for such activities exist (e.g., Benjamin, Nodine, Ernst, & Broeker, 1999; McKeachie, 1999; Ware & Johnson, 2000). For example, when teaching child development, instructors commonly use videos, which have been found to increase student understanding and interest (Grabe & Tabor, 1981; Silvestro, 1979). Although videos are easily accessible and can be used repeatedly, they may not depict the richness and diversity of children's behaviors. For this reason, many instructors prefer to have students observe or interact with children in a live setting (e.g., Kourany, Humphreys, & Rabin, 1987; Mann, Carney, & Parameswaran, 1996; Sugar & Livosky, 1988). Arranging for such placements, however, can be time-consuming and logistically difficult with large courses.

In response to these limitations, some instructors have designed activities that offer the benefits of live observation with fewer of the challenges. For example, Vacha-Haase (1996) described an activity in which children and their parents come to class and serve on a classroom panel. This exercise allows students to observe children engaging in largely unstructured free-play, but offers no opportunity for them to witness children participating in more structured activities. Balch (1986) suggested having a subset of students administer tasks to a child and videotape the session for laterclassroom viewing. Although this activity provides an opportunity to see children performing specific tasks, the range of tasks used is small, and only a subset of the students actually see the tasks performed live. Furthermore, although many instructors may use these types of activities in their classroom, there are surprisingly few documented reports of their effectiveness. Vacha-Haase (1996) reports that the students found the activity enjoyable and that it seemed to enhance their understanding, but her evidence is strictly anecdotal. Balch (1986) does provide data suggesting that students who watched their classmates perform tasks with children received higher scores on a subsequent quiz and found the activity worthwhile but there was no measure of effectiveness beyond this short-term gain.

In this paper we describe how to conduct a demonstration that builds upon both of these activities and can be used with any course that introduces students to concepts in child development. Like Vacha-Haase (1996), a group of children come to campus during a regular class meeting but our demonstration has them participate in both structured and unstructured activities. Our demonstration is also unique in the scope of tasks used, the opportunity for all students to witness live interaction, and the inclusion of upper-division students as assistants who both entertain the children and administer the tasks. Furthermore, we provide evidence for the effectiveness of such a demonstration on students' understanding and interest, as measured at both short-term and long-term intervals.

Method

Participants

Participants were recruited from a yearlong Introduction to Psychology course (N = 67) that included the demonstration as part of the curriculum. Evaluation instruments assessing understanding of developmental concepts were received from 56 students (66% female. 46% psychology majors), including three seniors, one junior, 13 sophomores, and 39 first-year students.

Twenty-four of these students (63% female. 50% psychology majors) completed a follow-up self-report instrument seven months later. The modest response rate (43%) can be attributed to the fact that recruitment took place during a new academic year and via a low-profile method of solicitation taken to minimize pressure and ensure anonymity. Four upper-division students who served as assistants for the demonstration also completed a self-report instrument.

All participants gave informed consent and received a candy bar as compensation. There was no connection between course performance and participation in either of the evaluations.

Materials

Demonstration. Although the demonstration could be designed around any concepts the instructor wished to emphasize, the current demonstration focused on classic Piagetian concepts, gender-role development, and theory-of-mind abilities, largely because tasks in these areas are easily replicable and tend to show differences across a limited age range (see Appendix for sample tasks and citations). A detailed script describing four or five tasks for each child in the demonstration was prepared. For example, the script for a three-year-old child included tasks to assess understanding of Level 1 and Level 2 perspective taking, appearance versus reality with the classic rock-sponge stimulus, false belief using a bandaid box that unexpectedly contained crayons, and number conservation. Any particular task was given to two or three children across a range of ages in order to show developmental change. For example, the number conservation task was given to a three-year-old, who argued that the spread-out row of pennies had more than the condensed row, and to a six-year-old, who argued that the two rows had the same number of pennies. Finally, a handout was prepared for the class that listed the children's first names, ages, and tasks that they would be given, along with space for notes to aid subsequent discussion.

Evaluation. The short-term instrument assessed participants' understanding of developmental concepts that had been described in previous lectures and readings, but also were illustrated in the demonstration. One item asked them to explain methodological challenges of conducting research with children, and the remaining 19 items assessed their understanding of classic Piagetian concepts, gender-role development, and theory-of-mind in a short-answer format (see Table 1 for sample items).

The long-term self-report instrument included five items that assessed how the demonstration affected participants' (1) understanding of the course content, (2) interest in the course, (3) understanding relative to a video, (4) understanding of how research with children is conducted, and (5) desire to attend a similar event in the future. Each item was followed by an 11-point Likert scale ranging from -5 (negative response) to 5 (positive response), with a neutral option in the middle. Space was provided underneath each item for participants to explain their numerical ratings. A parallel self-report instrument for the four student assistants was framed in terms of how the demonstration impacted their understanding and interest in developmental psychology more broadly.

Procedure

Demonstration. Nine children between the ages of 18 months and 7 years were recruited through friends and colleagues to participate in the demonstration during an 80-minute Introduction to Psychology course. Informed consent was obtained from all parents.

A table and chairs were placed at the front of the classroom along with a microphone to help the class hear children's responses. An additional table with child-friendly but quiet activities (e.g., books, puzzles) was available and supervised by student assistants in order to keep children entertained as they waited for their turn. Placing the play table near the front of the room was essential for both reducing children's anxiety and allowing the class to observe how children of different ages spontaneously play.

The tasks were administered by the course instructor (first author) as well as four upper-division students who each learned the script for one child and became familiar with the relevant materials during a preparation session. The assistants also helped children at the play table write their names and draw a picture on an overhead transparency, which was projected during their turn in front of the class. This demonstrated the developmental progression in children's writing and drawing skills. Finally, assistants occasionally took restless children to play in a room across the hall.

The demonstration proceeded from the youngest to the oldest child, in order to show developmental change and to prevent the younger children from getting tired or becoming uninterested in the event. Although organizing the demonstration by task (e.g., all Piagetian tasks across children followed by all gender tasks across children, etc.) may have best shown developmental change, it would have been logistically challenging. At the appointed time, each child was asked by an assistant if he or she wanted to take a turn. Upon answering affirmatively, the child was led to the front table. Parents of younger children joined them, while parents of older children typically stayed in the audience. The tasks for each child lasted five to ten minutes, after which the child returned to the play table. At the end of the demonstration, the class was given a chance to ask questions of the children. For example, based on research on gender segregation that the class had studied, one student asked a child whether she liked to play with boys or with girls. At the end of the demonstration, children were given a balloon and a small toy. Overall, children, parents, and students were enthusiastic about the demonstration.

Evaluation. In order to evaluate the efficacy of the demonstration, participants were divided into two groups quasi-randomly based on the position of their name on the class roster. The before group (n = 27) completed the short-term instrument one to two days before the demonstration, and the after group (n = 29) completed it within one day alter the demonstration. The before and after groups were equivalent to one another in scores on an earlier midterm examination and reported interest in the field of developmental psychology (all ps >.5). The instrument took approximately 15 minutes to complete and all responses were anonymous.

The long-term self-report instrument was sent to participants seven months later via campus mail. Participants' responses were anonymously returned via campus mail. It is estimated that the instrument took 10 minutes to complete.

Scoring and Coding

Short-term instrument. Both authors graded participants' responses while blind to their assigned group. Grading criteria were established by discussing 10 randomly selected cases. For the remaining 46 cases, there was 97% agreement overall, with agreement on individual items ranging from 82% to 100%. Disagreements were settled through discussion.

Long-term self-report instrument. Based on participants' open-ended responses, several categories were identified for coding that captured the most frequently mentioned benefits of the demonstration. Because of the free-flowing nature of participants' responses, coding was done holistically, rather than on a question-by-question basis. Responses were coded by a research assistant and the second author after discussing six randomly selected cases. There was 89% agreement on the remaining 18 cases, with disagreements settled through discussion.

Results

Short-Term Evaluation

The effectiveness of the demonstration was evaluated by comparing the performance of the before and after groups on the short-term assessment instrument. As expected, out of a possible 22 points, the after group (M = 16.69, SD = 2.54) performed significantly better than the before group (M = 15.57, SD = 2.56), t (54) = 1.63,p = .05, one-tailed. In practical terms, this difference translates into a one-half letter grade improvement. This is especially striking given that several children gave unanticipated responses during the demonstration (e.g., one three-year-old answered the false-belief questions correctly). Indeed, a second analysis removing four items that were based on tasks for which children had responded in an unexpected manner showed an even greater benefit of the demonstration (after M = 13.86, SD = 2.24; before M = 12.43, SD = 2.26). t (54) = 2.39, p < .01, one-tailed.

Long- Term Self-Report Evaluation

Numerical data. Responses to the survey questions were compared to zero using one-sample t-tests. Participants reported that the demonstration helped them understand the course content (M = 2.13, SD = 1.60), increased their interest in the course (M = 1.96, SD = 1.49), was more informative than watching a video (M = 2.26, SD = 2.32), increased their understanding of developmental research (M = 2.29, SD = 1.94), and made them want to attend a similar event in the future (M = 2.35, SD = 1.91), all ts (23) > 4.67, all ps < .0001. Similarly, the four upper-division students reported that assisting with the demonstration aided their conceptual understanding of developmental psychology (M = 3.75, SD = .50), increased their interest in developmental psychology (M = 3.5, SD = 1.29), was better than watching the demonstration (M = 3.75, SD = .50), and increased their understanding of developmental research (M = 3.50, SD = 1.29), all ts (3) > 5.42, all ps < .05. All assistants reported that they wanted to assist again in the future (M = 5.00, SD = 0).

Open-ended data. Given that the perceived effect of the demonstration was both positive and significant, students' open-ended responses were coded for the presence of four explicit benefits: increasing engagement. solidifying course material, enhancing methodological understanding, and demonstrating variability in children's responses. Half of the students who witnessed the demonstration mentioned three or more benefits explicitly and a full 79% mentioned at least two benefits. All of the upper-division student assistants mentioned all four of the benefits, with the exception of one assistant who did not mention the variability category.

Nearly all students (82%) indicated that the demonstration increased their engagement in the course. For example, one student wrote that "it was the most captivating aspect of Intro Psych," and another reported that "seeing the children live, especially during a demo like with the box with something unexpected inside, is much more compelling than simply talking or watching a video about it."

The majority of students (79%) also reported that the demonstration solidified conceptual understanding and enhanced memory for course material: "It is also easier to remember phenomena that happened right in front of me than if I had only read about it." This was a common response among the assistants as well: "[Assisting with the demonstration] has engrained some of the fundamental cognitive development differences in my brain. It has served as useful in class when I've needed to pull up examples of developmental differences."

Over half of the students (61%) commented on how the demonstration helped them to appreciate the difficulties of conducting developmental research, and improved their general understanding of research methods. As one student wrote, "Often, just reading assigned articles neglects to impress upon students the difficulty of doing research. I think that seeing the kids there with your assistants showed me a little about the organization that goes into methods and design; difficulties such as getting kids to sit and keeping them attentive are hard to infer from reading." Another noted that the demonstration "made it more obvious how important it is to make sure a child understands questions posed, and how difficult that can be."

Finally, a sizable percentage of students (43%) indicated that the demonstration was helpful because it showed the variability of responses among same-age children. For example, one student noted that "there were a few instances of children completing tasks before they were of the right age, by being inconsistent with lectures/books, it spurred my thinking...." As one of the assistants wrote, "Every child goes through the same developmental stages, but it is important to remember that each child experiences these stages differently and at their own pace. [The demonstration] makes this apparent." It should be noted, however, that 18% of the students also indicated that this variability could be a drawback of the demonstration: "Because some of the children acted in ways contrary to how they were 'supposed' to act at their age level, I got confused as to the fight stages at what time of life."

Supplementary data. The low return rate for the long-term self-report evaluation raises the concern that the respondents may have been a particularly motivated subset of the class whose assessment of the demonstration was more positive than that of the class more generally. Therefore, we conducted an in-class self-report evaluation with a new group of students who viewed a similar demonstration the following year. One month after the demonstration, during the last 15 minutes of a class period, all students present were asked to complete the self-report instrument. Completed instruments were received from 52 students (class enrollment was 78) with only one student visibly leaving the classroom without completing the instrument.

Both the numerical and open-ended data were quite similar to that of the initial sample. For example, students reported that the demonstration helped them understand the course content (M = 2.67, SD = 1.34), increased their interest in the course (M = 1.98, SD = 1.73), was more informative than watching a video (M = 2.35, SD = 2.17), increased their understanding of developmental research (M = 2.31, SD = 1.50), and made them want to attend a similar event in the future (M= 2.51, SD = 2.70), all ts (50) > 6.64, all ps < .0001. That essentially the same findings emerged with a larger and more representative sample eliminates the concern that our initial findings are due to a biased sample.

Discussion

This demonstration effectively increased students' understanding of developmental concepts on the short-term assessment, and their reported understanding and motivation seven months later. Importantly, initial cognitive gains were seen before any formal discussion of the demonstration occurred. These gains arguably would have been even more substantial if the assessment had taken place after the post-event debriefing during which both the expected and unexpected responses of children were discussed. It is likely that this sort of discussion deepens conceptual understanding and increases students' appreciation of individual differences--hypotheses that could be tested in future research.

Of course, one concern with the data from the short-term assessment is that the after group not only witnessed the demonstration but also received one additional exposure to the material, relative to the before group. It is difficult, therefore, to know whether the superior performance of the after group resulted from the demonstration per se or from multiple exposures to the material. Future research could address this concern by comparing the performance of students who witness the demonstration to students who do not see the demonstration but receive an additional exposure to the material via a more traditional technique--such as a lecture, reading, or video.

Despite this potential concern, however, the long-term self-report data suggest that the students themselves perceived the demonstration to provide unique benefits along a number of dimensions, including conceptual understanding. This is consistent with previous research that documents memory benefits for vivid instructional techniques (VanderStoep, Fagerlin, & Feenstra, 2000). Moreover, students reported the demonstration to be better than other instructional techniques, such as videos, because it showed variability within a given age bracket and methodological limitations of working with children--concepts that are difficult for students to grasp in traditional lecture courses. In sum, the current demonstration is an effective way to encourage active learning and increase student interest in a large lecture course, and to provide valuable experience with children for upper-division students.

Appendix

Sample Tasks to Use in a Live Demonstration

Classic Piagetian Tasks (see Flavell, 1963; Ginsburg & Opper, 1988)
Number Conservation
Liquid Conservation
Mass Conservation
Animism
Class Inclusion

Gender
Gender Identity (Kohlberg, 1966; Thompson, 1975)
Gender Constancy (Kohlberg, 1966; Marcus & Overton, 1978)

Theory of Mind
Non-Egocentric Understanding of Desire (Repacholi & Gopnik, 1997)
Level 1 and Level 2 Visual Perspective Taking (Masangkay et al., 1974)
Appearance versus Reality (Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1983)
False Belief Understanding (Perner, Leekam, & Wimmer, 1987)
Introspective Abilities (Flavell, Green, & Flavell, 1995)

Table 1
Sample Assessment Items by Category

Item Category   Sample Item

Piagetian       Piaget was interested not only in
Concepts          children's judgments on the
                  conservation tasks, but also
                  their explanations. What sort of
                  explanation might a child provide
                  in each of the following
                  situations:

                (a) A girl fails the liquid
                  conservation task, saying
                  that the tall and thin beaker
                  contains more liquid than the
                  short and wide beaker.
                  How would she explain
                  her answer?

                (b) A boy passes the liquid
                  conservation task, saying
                  that the two beakers contain
                  the same amount of liquid.
                  How would he explain his
                  answer?

                Which type of conservation is
                  typically understood first:
                  Number or Liquid?

Gender          How would a researcher know if
                  a child understood Gender
                  Constancy (i.e., what questions
                  might you ask? What sorts of
                  situations would you ask her
                  to judge?)?

                At approximately what age will a
                  child be able to tell you that
                  s/he is a boy or a girl?

Theory          Imagine you sit across from a child
of Mind           and ask him to judge what
                  each of the following pictures look
                  like both from his perspective and
                  from your perspective:

                * A card with a lion on one side and
                  a rabbit on the other, such
                  that you see the lion and he sees
                  the rabbit

                * A card with a picture of a turtle
                  laying flat on the table, such
                  that you see the turtle as being
                  right-side up and he sees the
                  turtle as being upside down

                Which of these tasks will the child
                  understand earlier in
                  development? Explain why one of
                  these tasks is harder.

                A 3-year-old is shown a sponge that
                  looks like a rock. Upon
                  learning that the object is in
                  fact a sponge, what does the
                  3-year-old say the object looks
                  like: A rock or a sponge?

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Jennifer Henderlong Corpus. Department of Psychology, Reed College; Anne O'Donnell Eisbach, Department of Psychology, Quinnipiac University.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jennifer Henderlong Corpus, Department of Psychology, Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland, OR 97202; Email: [e-mail]

A great debt of gratitude is owed to John Flavell, who introduced us to the idea of a live demonstration with children when we served as teaching assistants for his Developmental Psychology course at Stanford University. We also thank Vikram Jaswal for the idea of a handout and Christin Ogle for her capable assistance with coding and manuscript preparation.