Parental Beliefs And Expectations About Social and Cognitive Skills Development In Kindergarten

Author(s):

Gabriel Kappeler(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

14 SES 03 B, Family Education, Parenting and School-Family-Community Links I

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-08

17:15-18:45

Room:

109.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Satu Perälä-Littunen

Contribution

This communication aims to describe the concept of parental beliefs and parental expectations about skills development during kindergarten and to present research findings. As well as first school (Périsset Bagnoud, 2007), kindergarten is an interface between the home environment and the school environment. Therefore, for children and their parents, it is often their first contact with the school world. The distance between their family habitus and school habitus varies by family backgrounds (Plaisance, 1990). Access to information about the world and culture of education influences directly or indirectly the human capital of parents (Coleman, 1986) who must also build a “school capital” to understand this new environment.

One of the major goals of the kindergarten is to enable children to develop their socialization (Giroud, Meyer & Veuthey, 2014). Passerieux (2007) uses the term of “school socialization” because children are learning together. In fact, when children are developing cognitive skills, they are also enriched with social and emotional learning because the activities are usually carried out in groups (Saada & Durcret, 2009).

Parental beliefs and parental expectations on what is done or what they expect from kindergarten are not directly developed in the scientific literature. The concept of readiness is in this case closer. Indeed, parental beliefs about readiness are defined by parental perception on the level of acquisition of academic skills that a child must have acquired before starting kindergarten (Kagan, 1992). Affective skills, social skills and school habits are perceived by many parents as the fundament to be acquired before starting kindergarten. Cognitive skills and knowledge are put as second important placed up behind (Hatcher, Nuner, & Paulsel, 2012; Kim, Murdock, & Choi, 2005). While when it comes to the readiness to be acquired before starting primary school, parents perceive cognitive skills and knowledge as more important (Barbarin et al., 2008). In parallel, in terms of expectations about readiness, parents are also more likely to expect their child to develop social skills, emotional and academic habits before their child will start kindergarten (Achhpal, Goldman, & Rohner, 2007; Niikko & Havu-Nuutinen, 2009; Stamm & Edelmann, 2013).

In 2009, Switzerland has harmonized its school system. One of its main objectives was that all children start kindergarten at the age of 4 years in order to improve their understanding of the school language before beginning primary school (Hutterli & Vogt, 2014). Now, all children living in Switzerland are following two years of kindergarten between 4 and 6 years. Reducing inequality by lowering the entry age in school was already a French motivation since 1970 (Garnier, 2009). However the question on the entry age into the first school is not limited only to issues of inequality, but also on financial issues or cultural and social specificities (Brougère, 2002). For example, some mothers decide to delay the entry of their child either for reasons of maturity and development or for ideological and philosophical ideas (Noel & Newman, 2003).

More specifically, for this contribution, I will observe the change of parental beliefs and parental expectations in terms of social skills or in terms of cognitive skills according to the child's age when he is enrolled in kindergarten. How do parents perceive the skills that their child will develop during kindergarten? What do they expect more specifically according to the age of their child (4 or 5 years)? What are the differences between the parents’ beliefs and expectations based on their education and their professional category?

Method

Based on the analysis of the curriculum for the French speaking part of Switzerland about kindergarten and the analysis of three exploratory interviews with parents a questionnaire was developed. This questionnaire is composed of 18 items that aim to assess parents’ beliefs on the kindergarten (For me, kindergarten will require my child to learn to ...) and on the same model, parental expectations (For me, in kindergarten, I want my child to learn to ...). The items were always presented to parents in pairs. So, they had first to evaluate their beliefs for learning, then their expectations for the same skill on a 7 points Likert scale of. Five dimensions were retained: school learning habits, social learning, emotional learning, motor development and cognitive learning. The internal consistency of both scales varies for each dimension with alphas ranging from .69 to .82. A confirmatory factor analysis with AMOS shows a goodness of fit between the theoretical model and the data. In a second step, the questionnaire asked for parents' personal information (age, number of children, mother or father who completed the questionnaire, education level, employment status, professional category, ...). This questionnaire was distributed to approximately 700 parents having a child in kindergarten. When they had completed it, they had to insert it in a reply envelope. 319 questionnaires were completed, which is equivalent to a participation rate of 44%. The data collection was done in the canton of Fribourg (Switzerland) in September 2011. The context of Fribourg was especially interesting because between 2009 and 2013 the municipalities had to adapt their structure by providing two years of kindergarten. In fact, the canton of Fribourg had to adapt his school system to the new swiss law (HarmoS). So, the sample is composed of parents of children starting kindergarten at age 5, a group of parents with a child who starts at age of 4 years and a group of parents who have a child of 5 years starting its second year. For this communication, the analyses are focusing done on the two last groups of parents (N (4 years) = 149 and N (5 years) = 160)

Expected Outcomes

First, with respect to social learning or cognitive learning, parents’ beliefs are systematically lower than their expectations. Parents are more likely to expect their child to develop skills in these areas as that they think they are actually developed during the two years of kindergarten. Second, parental beliefs about social learning tend to decrease between the first and second year while they are increasing for cognitive learning. Although, parents do not expect that their child develops more social skills between the first and second year, they expect it develops more cognitive learning. However, their expectations in terms of cognitive learning rest less whether they are parents with a child 4 years or 5 years old child. Third, a cluster analysis has identified four groups of parents according to their expectations. The differences are explained in part by their education, their professional category and their level of agreement on lowering the entry age in kindergarten (4 years old instead of 5 years old). Three groups of 4 have expectations of social learning similar to those on cognitive learning. There is no difference between these two types of learning. However, the three groups are differentiated by the degree of judgment (high expectations, medium or low). Only one group of parents has high expectations for social learning and has weaker expectations in terms of cognitive learning. This is the most highly educated parent group and belonging to a higher professional category.

References

Achhpal, B., Goldman, J. A., & Rohner, R. P. (2007). A comparison of European American and Puerto Rican parents’ goals and expectations about the socialization and education of pre‐school children. International Journal of Early Years Education, 15, 1‑13. Barbarin, O. A., Early, D., Clifford, R., Bryant, D., Frome, P., Burchinal, M., … Pianta, R. (2008). Parental Conceptions of School Readiness: Relation to Ethnicity, Socioeconomic Status, and Children’s Skills. Early Education & Development, 19, 671‑701. Brougère, G. (2002). L’exception française: l’école maternelle face à la diversité des formes préscolaires. Les Dossiers des Sciences de I’Education, 7, 9–19. Coleman, J. S. (1986). Social Theory, Social Research, and a Theory of Action. American Journal of Sociology, 91, 1309‑1335. Garnier, P. (2009). Préscolarisation ou scolarisation ? L’évolution institutionnelle et curriculaire de l’école maternelle. Revue française de pédagogie. Recherches en éducation, (169), 5‑15. Giroud, P., Meyer, A., Vauthey, C. (2014). Pratiques déclarées d’enseignement et d’évaluation dans les premières années scolaires. Lausanne : Unité de recherche pour le pilotage des systèmes pédagogiques. Hatcher, B., Nuner, J., & Paulsel, J. (2012). Kindergarten Readiness and Preschools: Teachers’ and Parents’ Beliefs within and across Programs. Early Childhood Research & Practice, 14. Kagan, S. L. (1992). Readiness Past, Present, and Future: Shaping the Agenda. Young Children, 48(1), 48‑53. Kim, J., Murdock, T., & Choi, D. (2005). Investigation of Parents’ Beliefs about Readiness for Kindergarten: An Examination of National Household Education Survey (NHES: 93). Educational Research Quarterly, 29, 3‑17. Niikko, A., & Havu-Nuutinen, S. (2009). In Search of Quality in Finnish Pre-School Education. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 53, 431. Noel, A. M., & Newman, J. (2003). Why Delay Kindergarten Entry? A Qualitative Study of Mothers’ Decisions. Early Education & Development, 14, 479‑498. Périsset Bagnoud, D. (2007). Touche pas à mon école!. Permanence et changement dans l’organisation de l’enseignement. In M. Gather Thurler & O. Maulini (dir.), L’organisation du travail scolaire. Enjeu caché des réformes (pp. 39-56). Québec : Presses de l’Université du Québec. Plaisance, E. (1990). La sociologie de l'école maternelle comme contribution à une sociologie de la petite enfance. Les cahiers du CERFEE, 4, 181-199. Saada E., & Ducret J.-J. (2009). Représentations des pratiques éducatives chez les professionnel-le-s de la petite enfance. Genève : Service de la recherche en éducation. Stamm, M., & Edelmann, D. (2013). Elternerwartungen an Vorschulkinder: Eine empirische Studie zu Rolle und ihren Determinanten. Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Bildungswissenschaften, 35(2), 239‑254.

Author Information

Gabriel Kappeler (presenting / submitting)

University of Fribourg

Sciences of Education

Fribourg

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