This event will offer an interactive set of activities for families to learn more about child development research at Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast. Following up on the demand for these activities at the upcoming Being Human and ESRC Festival of Social Sciences, this event will offer both sets of activities at the Ulster Museum, and will include activities based on children’s development of language, literacy and physical development.
The programme includes a combination of researcher-led and self-directed activities for parents and children; for example, parents and children can participate in a 30-minute walking tour themed around children’s literacy, while shorter self-directed activities will include a colouring game designed for studying children’s language development, an interactive app on self-regulation and an app with animations to support the development of physical competence. The activities are designed for the whole family; for example, while children enjoy participating in the colouring game as a hands-on activity involving a series of pictures to colour in, the activity provides a concrete example to parents of developmental research, along with an explanation of how children’s colouring choices can reveal their interpretations of complex sentences.
The activities will be delivered by researchers at Ulster University and Queen’s University Belfast (including early career researchers), and supports this multidisciplinary collaboration between researchers across faculties. The event further offers the opportunity to assess the impact of engagement with the activities as a result of re-engagement following their initial delivery at the Being Human and ESRC Festivals: these events will include an initial impact assessment focusing on families’ awareness and views on child development. This assessment will then be used to further develop the activities for the Imagine Belfast festival – i.e., a more co-creation-based approach involving input from parents via the impact assessment. The impact of these modified activities may then be assessed at the Imagine Belfast festival.
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