Professor of Psychology
Department Chair Department of Psychology, University of California Santa Cruz

I received my Ph.D. in 1983 from Stanford University, and I am currently Professor and Chair of Psychology at UC Santa Cruz. I have served as a Study Section member for a Human Development and Aging grant review panel, and for a Cognition and Perception grant review panel, both for the National Institutes of Health. I will be serving as Associate Editor for the Journal of Cognition and Development beginning in July 2003.

1) Parent-child conversations as settings for cognitive development
The basic assumption underlying my research is a conceptualization of everyday family conversations as a crucial context for cognitive development. Perhaps nobody would argue against the importance of the family context theories of cognitive development, however, have pointedly focused on the individual child’s mind as the site of developmental change. In my lab, we have argued that parent-child conversations are more than just peripheral to development. Rather, we have been building a case, across different domains of cognitive development, suggesting that parent-child conversation may be seen as a crucial component of the mechanism of developmental change. This work began with the study of children’s understanding of categories of objects and links to object names. More recently, we have considered parent-child explanatory conversations as an important setting for children’s developing intuitive "theories" about the world (e.g., theory of mind, theories of the biological and physical world). (1,2,3,4,5)

2) ‘Why’ questions and causal explanations
As part of the focus on children’s ‘theories’ I have been particularly interested in causal talk in everyday family conversations. Rather than considering ‘theories’ as structures in the child’s mind, we suggest that children’s understanding about scientific domains emerges as part of conversation embedded in meaningful activity. Therefore, inspired by Rogoff’s sociocultural theory, my colleagues and I have investigated ‘why’-questions and causal explanations as they occur in natural family interactions. (6,7,8,9,10)

3) Family conversations about science in museum settings
Our interest in family conversations led us to children’s museums and science museums as natural settings in which "science talk" occurs. Through a collaboration with the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, my colleague (and former postdoctoral trainee) Kevin Crowley and I began an investigation of explanatory talk in museum settings. We have found a number of interesting patterns in this talk, including gender differences in parents’ explanations. (10, 11)

We have also explored a number of links between aspects of cognitive development and related patterns of talk in family museum conversations. For example, children’s understanding of analogy is a topic of interest in developmental psychology. Our studies of parents’ use of analogy in museum interactions adds to this literature and helps to articulate our more general point about the role of the social context in basic cognitive development. We have conducted similar analyses of other topics, including children’s understanding of video as an external representation, and children’s understanding of the shape of the earth. (12,13) As part of our research collaboration with the San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum, we have also written about the design of museum exhibits as they relate to family conversations and children’s informal learning. (14)

4) Cultural variation in family conversations about science
As part of our research funded by CREDE (Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence) we have been very interested in understanding more about the variation in styles of family conversation, especially as related to parent’s educational background and to cultural background of the family. This work has focused on Mexican-descent and European-descent families in central California. In a new collaboration with the Children’s Discovery Museum, we are planning to expand our study to include Vietnamese-descent and Mexican-descent families in the San Jose area as well. (15,16,17)

5) Links between family conversations and classroom conversations about science
Another component of the CREDE funded project involved investigation of science talk in preschool classrooms and attempts to create links between teachers and parents so that classroom talk can be contextualized in an understanding of children’s interests and backgrounds. (18, 19)

1) Parent-child conversations as settings for cognitive development

(1) Jipson, J., & Callanan, M. (2003). Mother-child conversation and children's understanding of biological and non-biological changes in size. Child Development, 74, 629-644.

(2) Akhtar, N, Jipson, J., & Callanan, M. (2001). Learning words through overhearing. Child Development, 72, 416-430.

(3) Sabbagh, M., & Callanan, M. (1998). Metarepresentation in action: 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds' developing theories of mind in parent-child conversations. Developmental Psychology, 34, 491-502.

(4) Cervantes, C., & Callanan, M. (1998) Labels and explanations in mother-child emotion talk: Age and gender differentiation. Developmental Psychology, 34, 88-98.

(5) Callanan, M. A. (1991). Parent-child collaboration in young children's understanding of category hierarchies. In S. Gelman & J. Byrnes (Eds.), Perspectives on Language and Cognition: Interrelations in Development (pp. 440-484). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Back to top

(6) Callanan, M., Cervantes, C., & Sabbagh, M. (1999). Conversation and conceptual development: Challenges, alternatives, and future directions. Human Development, 42, 356-361.

(7) Callanan, M. A., & Shrager, J., & Moore, J. (1995). Parent-child collaborative explanations: Methods of identification and analysis. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4, 105-129.

(8) Callanan, M. A., & Oakes, L. M. (1992). Preschoolers' questions and parents' explanations: Causal thinking in everyday activity. Cognitive Development, 7, 213-233.

(9) Callanan, M., & Jipson, J. (2001). Explanatory conversations and young children’s developing scientific literacy. In K. Crowley, C. Schunn, & T. Okada (Eds.), Designing for Science: Implications from Everyday, Classroom, and Professional Settings (pp. 21-49). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Back to top

(10) Crowley, K., Callanan, M.A., Tenenbaum, H.R., & Allen, E. (2001). Parents explain more often to boys than to girls during shared scientific thinking. Psychological Science, 12, 258-261.

(11) Crowley, K., Callanan, M., Jipson, J., Galco, J., Topping, K., & Shrager, J. (2001). Shared scientific thinking in everyday parent-child activity. Science Education, 85, 712-732.

(12) Valle, A., & Callanan, M. (under review). Analogy use in parent-child conversations about science topics.

(13) Callanan, M., Jipson, J., & Soennichsen, M. (2002). Maps, globes and videos: Parent-child conversations about representational objects. In S. Paris (Ed.) Perspectives on Object-Centered Learning in Museums (pp. 261-283). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

(14) Crowley, K., & Callanan, M. (1998). Describing and supporting collaborative scientific thinking in parent-child interactions. Journal of Museum Education (Special issue on Understanding the Museum Experience: Theory and Practice, Scott Paris, Ed.), 23, 12-17.

Back to top

(15) Tenenbaum, H., Callanan, M., Alba-Speyer, C., & Sandoval, L. (2002). Parent-child science conversations in Mexican-descent families: Educational background, activity, and past experiences as moderators. Hispanic Journal of the Behavioral Sciences, 24, 225-256.

(16) Pérez-Granados, D. R, & Callanan, M. A. (1997). Parents and siblings as early resources for young children's learning in Mexican-descent families. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 19, 3-33.

(17) Pérez-Granados, D. R., & Callanan, M. A. (1997). Conversations with mothers and siblings: Young children's semantic and conceptual development. Developmental Psychology, 33, 120-134.

Back to top

(18) Callanan, M., Coto, P., Miranda, L., Striffler, A., Allen, J., Crandall, C., & Murphy, C. (2001). Preschool science: contextualizing curriculum with children’s questions and family stories. In E. McIntyre, A. Rosebery, & N. González (Eds.), Classroom Diversity: Connecting Curriculum to Students’ Lives (pp. 61-75). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

(19) Callanan, M., Alba-Speyer, C., & Tenenbaum, H. (2000). Linking home and school through children’s questions that followed family science workshops. Research Brief #8, Center for Education, Diversity, and Excellence (CREDE).