This article presents two studies on how Brazilian children (ages 9–11) use conversational agents (CAs) for schoolwork, discovery, and entertainment, and how structured scaffolds can enhance these interactions. In Study 1, a seven-week online investigation with 23 participants (children, parents, teachers) employed interviews, observations, and Cognitive Work Analysis to map children’s information-processing flows, the role of more knowledgeable others, functional uses, contextual goals, and interaction patterns to inform conversation-tree design. We identified three CA functions—School, Discovery, Entertainment—and derived a scaffold framework mirroring parent–child support. In Study 2, we prompted GPT-4o-mini on 1,200 simulated child–CA exchanges, comparing conversation-tree frameworks based on structured-prompting to an unstructured baseline. Quantitative evaluation of readability, question count/depth/diversity, and coherence revealed gains for the framework approach. Building on these findings, we offer design recommendations: scaffolded conversation trees, child-dedicated profiles for personalized context, and caregiver-curated content. Our contributions include the first CWA application with Brazilian children, an empirical framework of child–CA information flows, and an LLM-scaffolding framework (i.e., structured-prompting) for effective, scaffolded learning.

Investigating child-computer interactions within their contexts is vital for designing technology that caters to children’s needs. However, determining what aspects of context are relevant for designing child-centric technology remains a challenge. We introduce EXPLORA, a multimodal, multistage online methodology comprising three pivotal stages: ( 1) building a teacher-apprentice relationship, ( 2) learning from child-teachers, and ( 3) assessing and reinforcing researcher-apprentice learning. Central to EXPLORA is the collection of attitudinal data through pre-observation interviews, offering researchers a deeper understanding of children’s characteristics and contexts. This informs subsequent online observations, allowing researchers to focus on frequent interactions. Furthermore, researchers can validate preliminary assumptions with children. A means-ends analysis framework aids in the systematic analysis of data, shedding light on context, agency and homework-information searching processes children employ in their activities. To illustrate EXPLORA’s capabilities, we present nine single case studies investigating Brazilian child-caregiver dyads ( children ages 9-11) use of technology in homework information-searching.