How do children begin to make the transition from seeing the natural world to scientifically observing the natural world? This study explored how differences in parent conversational strategies and disciplinary knowledge impact children's experience observing biological phenomena during shared informal learning. A total of 79 parent-child pairs…

Informed by literature on childhood expertise in high-interest topics and parent-child conversation in museum settings, this study explored how children's level of dinosaur expertise influences family learning opportunities in a natural history museum. Interviews identified children with high and low dinosaur knowledge and assigned them to expert…