Families’ Imaginations in a Meteorology Workshop: Imagining Weather Through Prototyping a Weather Station

Abstract

The paper presents a qualitative case study of families’ imagination practices around weather in two informal learning settings. The study investigates families’ imagined weather phenomena and meteorological practices as they created weather stations using the prototyping tool littleBits. The work is grounded in cultural-historical theory related to artifacts, imagination, and science representations. Participants include 7 families from two weather workshops, and data comprise families’ video and audio recordings. The findings show that prototyping artifacts — the technological tools — materially and culturally mediated how families imagined and represented science phenomena and practices. The study contributes to understanding the role of imagination in children and families’ science learning and science representations.