PEEP Family Science: Highlights from the Research

PEEP Family Science is designed for parents and their three- to five-year-old children, especially those from low-income families who are served by home visiting organizations. A media-based project featuring the preschool public television science program PEEP and the Big Wide World, it includes animated stories, live-action videos with real children, hands-on science activities, and educational resources designed to support parents and home visiting educators. PEEP Family Science comes in the form of four apps, one for each science unit: ramps, colors, sounds, and shadows. Once downloaded, the apps can be used offline—parents do not need to have Wi-Fi or to use their phone’s cellular data.

Educational media developers from WGBH and researchers from Education Development Center’s Center for Children and Technology (EDC) collaborated with two home visiting organizations, AVANCE and HIPPY, to develop and test PEEP Family Science.

The design of PEEP Family Science rests on the central conjecture that, with resources that engage and scaffold their own learning, parents can learn about and implement practices to support their children’s science learning. To examine this premise, the research team conducted an implementation study with 217 families and 20 home educators using a pre/post study design that included a parent comparison group, surveys of parents, interviews and focus groups with educators, and observations and interviews with a subsample of parents and educators.

A small but growing body of research has examined the role that media and technology can play in supporting parent engagement in their children’s learning. By studying the design and implementation of PEEP Family Science, the study builds on this work in two ways: First, few studies have examined how to help families with young children do science at home. Second, little is known about how to bring a media-based intervention to low-income families at a large scale using families’ existing technology and resources. This resource highlights our key findings.