Within engineering education, informal, out-of-school making experiences and parent–child interactions within home environments are both considered as a promising context for the development of engineering discourse and practices. However, less is known about how parents support children’s engagement in engineering learning, particularly when they are foregrounded with making that use materials and technologies that can introduce sources of uncertainty. To understand both the opportunities and uncertainties of centering making within parent–child engineering learning experiences, this study examines how parents’ use of epistemic supports differ between engineering design tasks with technology and engineering design tasks without technology, and within the different phases in the engineering design process. The study further investigates how parents exhibit epistemic uncertainties differently between engineering design tasks. Building on the notion of guided participation to frame engineering learning and making as co-constructed through multiple situated interactions, this study demonstrates that: (a) parents are skilled knowledge practitioners for their children’s engagement of engineering learning through the use of various epistemic supports; (b) the presence of technology in the engineering design tasks prompt different types of epistemic practices and engineering design phases; (c) opportunities and tensions co-emerge when parents experience epistemic uncertainty about STEM concepts or troubleshooting during engineering design tasks with technology. We discuss implications for the design of engineering design tasks within home environments that extend the use of parents’ epistemic supports.

在工程教育中，非正式的校外制作经验以及家庭环境中的亲子互动都被认为是工程话语和实践发展的有希望的环境。然而，人们对父母如何支持孩子参与工程学习知之甚少，特别是当他们使用可能引入不确定性来源的材料和技术时。为了了解亲子工程学习经验中以中心化为中心的机会和不确定性，本研究探讨了在工程的不同阶段，父母对认知支持的使用在有技术的工程设计任务和没有技术的工程设计任务之间有何不同。设计过程。该研究进一步调查了父母在工程设计任务之间如何表现出不同的认知不确定性。基于引导参与的概念，通过多重情境互动共同构建工程学习和制造框架，本研究表明：(a) 父母是熟练的知识实践者，可以让孩子通过使用各种认知支持参与工程学习；(b) 工程设计任务中技术的存在促使不同类型的认知实践和工程设计阶段；(c) 当父母在使用技术进行工程设计任务期间遇到对 STEM 概念或故障排除的认知不确定性时，机会和紧张感同时出现。我们讨论了家庭环境中工程设计任务的设计的含义，这些任务扩展了父母认知支持的使用。