First years of life are uniquely significant for the development of all aspects of the young children’s cognitive, social-emotional, and physical development. More specifically, early experiences particularly in cognitive field have an impact on gaining knowledge and acquisition and autobiographical memory development (Wareham & Salmon, 2006). Nelson (1993) describes the autobiographical memory as a system lays on specific, personal past events memories which are significant for one. Factually, autobiographical memory allows individuals to share personal experiences with others and open a door to connect a bond with them. It is not just about the self, but experiences which are personally significant and meaningful are emerged from emotions, motivations, and the goals that are rooted from interaction with the world. In this vein, autobiographical memory is characterized as declarative, since it vastly depends on unique perspectives and experiences of self in relation to others (Clevelend & Reese, 2005).

            Memory development, specifically the development of autobiographical memory depends on what “social interaction model” serves us. In social interaction model, parents are influential figures to shape their children’s personal memory through being modeling with their styles of talking and thinking about the past (Haden, Haine & Fivush; 1997; Leichtman, Pillemer, Wang, Koreishi & Han, 2000). Under the umbrella of social interaction model, it is considered that not only reminiscing related to the past, but also mother-child conversations on a shared event is also a type of revisiting past, because in joint reminiscing, mothers guide their children in the structure of her elaboration style to scaffold a child’s learning and opportunities to remember the event. Thus, joint reminiscing and shared thinking between mothers and children about what is happening in past, present and future have greater impact on children’s learning. In this aspect, differences in maternal reminiscing ways are resulted in differences in children’s autobiographical narrative skills (Clevelend, Reese & Grolnick, 2007; Reese & Newcombe, 2007). Having more elaborative reminiscing style with rich details and highly descriptive stories makes children to talk in more detailed and more coherent reminiscing about personally experienced events (Wareham & Salmon, 2006). Herein, the critical point is the difference between children who have high and low elaborative mothers resulted in gaining new provisions about the situation learned instantly or in the past (Clevelend, Reese & Grolnick, 2007). Children who have high elaborative mothers are tremendously provided new information about past or during a shared episode throughout the conversation (Reese and Newcombe, 2007). On the other hand, mothers who have low elaborative style talk with their children in less elaborative, less detailed and more repetitive about the past events and during a shared episode (Leyva, Reese, Grolnick & Price, 2008; Hedrick, Haden & Ornstein, 2009).

            Based on the information provided above, the overarching aim of the current study is to unfold how learning and understanding vermicomposting are shaped through mother-guided reminiscing from socio-cultural perspective. More specifically, the current study aims to reveal how mothers’ reminiscing style with their preschool children develop children’s understanding, remembering, and learning about sustainability during and after participated in a series of activities about vermicomposting within the scope of designed an early childhood education for sustainability (ECEfS) program.

In the current study, in order to gain in depth information, a qualitative research design will be employed. Qualitative research aims to provide an in-depth description and understanding of human experiences (Linchtman, 2013) in order to capture the individuals’ perspectives and ideas with respect to real life situations they experience (Yin, 2012). Purposive sampling method will be eligible for the current study. Mother’s conversation styles and their children’s current language skill levels will be the criteria to select participants for the study. The main sample of the study will be composed of 60-72 month-old preschool children and their mothers (N=16) in a public preschool locating in Ankara/Turkey. The study consists of two steps namely baseline and implementation (including series of activities within the scope of ECEfS program) phases. Baseline phase includes tasks for categorizing mothers reminiscing style as high elaborative and low elaborative mothers. Immediately after, in order to assess the impact of elaborative conversation style, mothers who will be randomly selected from two groups (high and low elaborative mothers) will participate in training sessions related to how to talk in elaborative style before participating in ECEfS program with children. The foci point of training for mothers is to inform mothers on utilizing high elaborative conversation style with their children to support learning and understanding. At the end of the baseline phase –based on preliminary analysis- there will be four group mothers as (a) trained high elaborative mothers (n=2) and (b) untrained high elaborative mothers (n=2) and similarly, low-elaborative mothers will be grouped as (c) trained low-elaborative (n=2) and (d) untrained low-elaborative mothers (n=2). Before the implementation ethical permissions will be gained from Ministry of National Education, school administration and mothers. After the implementation, the researchers will conduct two separate semi-structured interviews with the children (two days and three weeks after the implementation) to reveal the differences in children’s memory reports on vermicomposting. The interviews will be audio-taped and coded by using Child Memory Conversation Codes proposed by Reese, Haden and Fivush (1993); (a) Memory responses (b) Memory placeholders (c) Evaluations (d) Associative Talk (e) Meta-memory Talk (f) Off-topic Talk.

In the current study, a qualitative methodology is adapted to reveal differences in children’s memory reports and understanding on vermicomposting regarding different conversational styles of mothers during and after early childhood for sustainability (ECEfS) program. It is expected that, children will report more detailed and embellished experiences two days after the implementation phase if they engage in highly elaborative talk with their mothers than children who will experience less detailed talk during activities on vermicomposting. Furthermore, when all of the children will be interviewed in three weeks after the joint activities, the actual and strongest impact of highly elaborative talk on children’s memory report will be unfolded, because, as stated in related literature, mother-child elaborative reminiscing during joint activities facilitates children’s understanding and remembering (Boland, Haden & Ornstein, 2003;) and three weeks’ delay indicates an apparent difference in children’s memory reports (Hedrick, Haden and Ornstein, 2009; Salmon & Reese, 2016). Manipulating the conversation through training mothers regarding use of specific conversational techniques will also inform us about the role of critical elements of elaborative reminiscing and mother-child talk on understanding, learning and memory reports. Children who have multiple exposures to high elaborative talk during and after joint composting activities will expected to serve extended memory reports and richer representations on why recycling of organic wastes is important and the elements of vermicomposting.

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