ABSTRACT

Parents who vary in their experience with formal schooling are likely to use different types of informal guidance with their children. However, rather than assuming a deficit approach we need evidence regarding how parents with limited schooling support their children’s learning. Forty U.S. families of Mexican-heritage, from two levels of schooling experience, engaged with their children in a sink-or-float activity. Parents’ questions and evaluations and children’s decision-making and questions were observed and coded. Parents with higher schooling asked more questions and made more evaluative comments about their children’s performance, whereas parents with basic schooling tended to evaluate their own performance more often. Parents made more decisions about items overall; however, children whose parents had basic schooling made more decisions and asked more conceptual questions than those with higher schooling parents. Children of higher schooling parents asked more procedural questions. These findings suggest that parents with basic schooling engaged with their children as collaborators, using open-ended inquiry. Conversely, parents with more schooling experience took an instructor-like role, which may have limited children’s opportunities to engage in critical thinking.

摘要

接受正规学校教育的经验不同的父母可能会对孩子使用不同类型的非正式指导。然而，与其假设赤字方法，我们还需要关于受教育程度有限的父母如何支持孩子学习的证据。40 个拥有墨西哥传统文化的美国家庭，具有两个层次的学校教育经验，与他们的孩子一起参与了下沉或漂浮的活动。观察并编码家长的问题和评价以及儿童的决策和问题。受过高等教育的父母对孩子的表现提出更多的问题和更多的评价性评论，而受过基础教育的父母往往更频繁地评价自己的表现。家长对整体项目做出了更多决定；然而，父母受过基础教育的孩子比父母受过高等教育的孩子做出更多的决定，提出更多的概念性问题。高中生父母的孩子提出了更多的程序性问题。这些发现表明，接受过基础教育的父母作为合作者与他们的孩子合作，使用开放式调查。相反，具有更多学校教育经验的父母扮演了类似教师的角色，这可能会限制孩子进行批判性思维的机会。