PRIMARY-GRADE STUDENTS' KNOWLEDGE AND THINKING ABOUT FAMILIES

Abstract

K-3 learners were interviewed to elicit their knowledge and thinking (including misconceptions) about families, a major topic in primary social studies. Along with valid knowledge, the learners displayed significant knowledge gaps and misconceptions about marriage, kinship relations, and family life in the past, in other agricultures and in urban vs. rural communities within the contemporary United States. These findings are discussed with relation to implications for teaching about families in primary social studies, emphasizing commonalities bottomed in the shared human condition as a way to counteract children's orientation toward presentism and chauvinism.

Introduction

Contemporary theory and research point to the value of connecting instruction with students' prior knowledge, the two by building on their accurate knowledge and by means of clearing up misconceptions. To do in like manner however, we need rich description of exhibitions in what children typically know (or think they know) about the satisfied The authors have generated of that kind information by interviewing K-3 scholars about families and other cultural universals emphasized in the primary social studies curriculum (Brophy & Alleman, in press)

Procedures

Interviews upon families were conducted with 96 scholars 24 in each of Grades K-3 stratified within each grade by the agency of prior achievement levels and sex The students attended the public place of educations of a lower middle/working class bedroom suburb of a small city (population about 160000) The suburb is average or slightly above average upon most socioeconomic and educational indices.

Most of the pupils interviewed were white, reflecting the population of their community. We did not consider race or ethnicity in identifying pupils for the sample, although we stipulated that interviewees must have worn out all or at least greatest in quantity of their childhood in the United States.

Interview questions were disentangleed from three general sources: social studies teacher education textbook and other sources that identify lock opener ideas about families that are lower parted in the social science disciplines; information about families typically included in elementary social studies textbook or in children's tradebooks; and our have ideas about key features of instructional units designed to teach satisfied for understanding, appreciation, and life application (Brophy & Alleman, 1996) The pupils were interviewed individually. They were asked relatively open-end questions, with follow-up probes. Their answers were tape recorded and transcribed, then codfished into categories that reflected commonly appearing ideas. Coder agreement averaged 85% Analyses of scores derived from the coding typically revealed sturdy grade-level differences but much weaker achievement horizontal and gender differences. This article summarizes general tends across the sample as a whole, because these have the greatest in quantity potential implications for planning curriculum and instruction. Details of the findings can be place in the technical report (Brophy & Alleman, 2001) and forthcoming work (Brophy & Alleman, in press)

Research upon Children's Knowledge About Families

Most of what is known about children's ideas about families and family living focuses upon their knowledge of kinship relations. Edwards (1984) synthesizes the findings of a great deal of of this research. She noted that young children use kinship boundarys in talking about their social relationships, on the contrary often conflate friendships and family relationships. Adults define friendships as voluntary, self-chosen relationships based upon ties of liking, common interests and in the way that on, but define family relationships in bounds of genealogical and legal kinship connections. Young children usually do not understand these connections, in the way that they are more likely to think about family in limits of closeness and support.

Fischer et al. (1984) put in mind ofed that children develop through four stages from congeal to abstract levels of understanding of kinship concepts

Step One: solidify categorical concepts. Children begin to use kinship bounds as social labels at about age three Typically they use solitary the most common terms (mother, father, grandmother, uncle etc) and apply them to race both inside and outside the family. They do not understand the kinship relationships and cannot coordinate them. For example, they think of a "mother" as a woman and a "son" as a male child without understanding that in order to be a mother, a woman must have a son or daughter.

Step Two: Early relational universals Around age four or five, children begin to coordinate these categories and understand that kinship boundarys imply a relationship between sum of two units people. However, they remain vague about its nature, perhaps thinking that clan are relatives because they live in the same house or like each other a lot

Step Three: Later relational general [i]or[/i] abstract notions Beginning about age six or seven children start to coordinate multiple kinship characters into a "web of relations." They begin to understand that single person can occupy many kinship parts at once (be one person's wife, another's mother, etc) They begin to impel away from the "closeness" definition of family toward a kinship-based definition, frequently mentioning a third person when asked to explain the relationship between sum of two units people. They also begin to include relatives like as grandparents and cousins upon their family lists, and to understand that a family member who propels out of the home still remains related.