Elementary school-aged children’s attitudes toward others: The role of parental conversations and school interventions

• In Event: Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Topic - Moral Development

Abstract

The ways in which adults in children’s lives communicate prosocial messages related to fairness and openness to diversity has the potential to affect how children develop generalized views of others (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2007). The array of factors and bidirectional nature of parents’ communication and child attitudes/beliefs make it difficult to make claims to the direction of impact of parent-directed communication. Educators and school-based interventions can also be effective in promoting tenets of fairness and other-oriented attitudes (Greenberg et al., 2003). Here, we used longitudinal data from a school-based evaluation to explore whether parent-reported conversations about fairness/openness to diversity predicted their children’s other-oriented attitudes and beliefs months later. We further explored whether participation in a socioemotional learning curriculum also predicted these child outcomes.
The larger initiative involved 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th graders across nine elementary schools with ethnically and racially diverse student bodies. Children participated in one of three conditions: socioemotional learning curriculum, reading-based curriculum, and a no-program comparison. There were roughly equal numbers across: the experimental condition involved 4 schools, 41 classrooms, 588 students) and the control conditions involved 5 schools, 49 classrooms, 567 students. Child, teacher, and parent data were collected at 3 waves, 1) pre-test prior to a 3-month experimental condition, 2) post-test immediately after, and 3) 6-months after the post-test.
The present study is a first step in a larger set of plans for these data. Specifically, we tested the directionality of parent-reported socialization conversations and child-reported attitudes and beliefs. Parents rated how frequently they talked to their child about openness to others, fairness, and diversity (e.g., “treating other people fairly;” “the importance of learning about people of different races or cultures”). Children rated how true phrases were for them (e.g., “I think all people should be treated fairly;” “I like being around people who are different from me”). In addition, we included demographic data (e.g., child age, parental education) in our analyses.
In a series of structural equation modeling growth curve models, we tested the associations between parent conversations about fair treatment of others and child attitudes toward others. The best fitting model showed that rates of parent conversations at Wave 1 positively predicted their children’s other-oriented attitudes at Wave 3, controlling for previous levels and demographic variables, as well as for the presence of school-based socioemotional interventions. These initial findings suggest that earlier parent-reported conversations about fairness and diversity predict parallel outcomes in children, and that they do so even after controlling for the effects of socioemotional learning programs. Additional models will be run to further assess study condition and potential nested classroom and school-level factors.
Existing literature that suggests the powerful role that parents can play in the prosocial socialization of their children in a world that could benefit from children growing up to treat others fairly, embrace diversity, and believe the best in others. The present findings offer further impetus to explore the factors of family communication and school-based interventions in the prosocial development of children.

Authors

• Lacey J. Hilliard, Suffolk University
  Presenting Author

• AnneMarie K. McClain, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Non-Presenting Author