Collaborative Inquiry or Teacher Talk? Parent Guidance during a Science-Related Activity in Mexican-Heritage Families from Two Schooling Groups

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.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Data collection for this research was supported in part under the Education Research and Development Program, PR/Award No. R306A60001, the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence (CREDE), as administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), National Institute on the Education of At-Risk Students (NIEARS), and US Department of Education. Coding, data analysis, and writing phases were supported by a Cota-Robles Fellowship and a Chancellor’s Fellowship from University of California, Santa Cruz to the first author.