IMLS Project Expands Research Into Children’s Innovation Processes

IMLS-Funded Project Investigates Elements Leading to Children’s Innovation Processes The Innovation Destination Site Offers Resources for Young Innovators and Adult Mentors

Marilyn Plavocos Arnone

What prompts young children to innovate? Where do they find the tools they use to develop innovations? How do they seek mentors to encourage their innovation paths?

Those questions and others about the innovation process in young children are being examined in the “Young Innovators” project and the resulting insights are being gathered into a website for librarians and other adult mentors of child innovators. “The Innovation Destination” site is the work of researchers Dr. Ruth Small and Dr. Marilyn Plavocos Arnone, whose efforts were funded by a prestigious $249,495 National Leadership Grant for Libraries from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Dr. Small has served as the Laura J. & L. Douglas Meredith Professor at the iSchool; director of the Center for Digital Literacy and of the Center’s Project ENABLE; and co-editor of School Library Research. She retired from her iSchool faculty position in the fall of 2017, but continues work as a research professor. Dr. Arnone is an iSchool research associate professor and associate professor of practice. The pair have worked together on groundbreaking children’s information and library projects several times and have previously received IMLS research funding.

The concept for the project came about through Dr. Small’s work over the past decade and its applications with young innovator organizations and the role of librarians in supporting innovation and entrepreneurship in children and teens, she says. The pair have worked with experts in mentoring and supporting young innovators on this project. Their collaborations have included prominent national and state organizations and community facilities By Kids For Kids; the Connecticut Invention Convention; New York On Tech; Time2Invent; OCLC’s Webjunction and the Center for Mentoring Excellence.

NEW LIBRARY RESOURCES The grant has permitted Small (as principal investigator) and Arnone (as co-principal investigator) to develop, produce and distribute information designed to spur creative thinking among students in grades 4 through 8 and provide librarians and other adults who guide young innovators with new types of library resources.They also wanted to enable librarians to understand of the importance of motivating and supporting student inquiry and innovation by creating innovation spaces within their libraries and by demonstrating knowledge and skills for being innovation mentors. They worked with close to 100 school librarians throughout the project.

“While innovation and entrepreneurship are certainly about creativity and problemsolving, what really excites me is learning more about thecuriosity triggers among young inventors and entrepreneurs.”

— MARILYN PLAVOCOS ARNONE

The training and new resources comprise the content for The Innovation Destination website, which uses an iterative design approach to its learning games, bibliographies and research articles. Designed for use by elementary and middle school librarians, teachers, parents and students, the site’s centerpiece is KidsClips. The clips are video interviews with successful young innovators offering their insights into the innovation process. At the same time, the materials present the child interviewees as role models for other young innovator-hopefuls.

Dr. Arnone observes, “While innovation and entrepreneurship are certainly about creativity and problem-solving, what really excites me is learning more about thecuriosity triggers among young inventors and entrepreneurs.” Prior research

has shown thatcuriosity questionsseemto diminishaschildren reachthe third-grade level, Dr. Arnone notes, saying her hope is that their work “providesaresource that also helps librariansstimulatethe curiositythatcanlead toinventiveness.”

MENTORS ARE CRUCIAL Their interviews with 50 children conducted throughout 2017 underscored a prior finding regarding the importance of mentors on children’s innovation processes, according to Dr. Small. “The element that’s of critical importance in children’s innovation is having an adult mentor in the lives of these imaginative, creative kids,” she notes. Those mentors know when and how to encourage without taking over and they effectively provide guided learning as opposed to teaching processes— methods that have big differences, she says. “The mentors also understand that mentoring is a process that begins with the establishment of mutual trust and requires specific knowledge, skills and attitudes from both mentor and mentee,” she adds.

Additional questions about the innovation process have been raised in the course of their research, according to Dr. Small. “We are also looking at the innovation process itself to try to

understand common issues that arise (particularly often inevitable failure), ways of handling those issues, how kids go from curiosity to deep interest to passion and what seem to be critical components of the process.”

INNOVATION RESOURCES The ultimate goal of their efforts is creation of a broad network of innovative and freely available resources for use by school librarians who want to transform their libraries into innovation spaces, create innovation-related programs and activities that stimulate curiosity and inquiry and inspire and support students’ innovative activities, the pair report. Additional facets include providing online training to school librarians on how to effectively mentor young innovators in their schools and creating a comprehensive and searchable database of resources for teachers, librarians, parents and the kids themselves, according to Dr. Small.

With additional funding, the project will continue into additional phases, including interviews with children in the kindergarten to thirdgrade age levels. Ultimately, Drs. Small and Arnone hope to follow kids from kindergarten to grade 12 “so that we get a broader glimpse of how this process evolves.” n