Cultural Variation in Parents’ Question-Asking with Young Children in Challenging Problem-Solving Activities

• In Event: The Influence of Caregiver Talk on Young Children's Persistence

Abstract

Asking children questions is a common practice for caregivers in some cultural communities, and these questions may be used to support children’s engagement in challenging activities. However, as cultural ideologies about learning vary across communities, question-asking practices may also vary (e.g. Rogoff, 2014; Tobin et al., 1989). For example, research has shown that middle-class European American parents tend to ask pedagogical questions, in line with mainstream U.S. schooling practices (Heath, 1982; Rogoff et al., 1993). Chinese-heritage caregivers, being influenced by Confucian ideologies, may endorse directive guidance, and therefore ask different kinds of questions (Zhang et al., 2021). When enacting directive guidance, parents offer children clear models of the right behavior and encourage children to practice, maintaining a deep level of collaboration throughout the learning process (Chao, 1994; Li, 2012). The present study examined whether question-asking by Chinese immigrant parents aligned with the cultural practice of directive guidance and whether it varied across different problem-solving tasks.

Sixteen European American mother-child dyads and 16 first-generation Chinese immigrant dyads in the U.S. participated. Children ranged in age from 2.5 to 4 years; half were female. Each dyad began the session with a warm-up drawing task. Then, the dyad completed a series of close-ended 3D puzzle tasks in which they arranged a set of blocks to match a target picture. Finally, dyads completed an open-ended sorting task. In the sorting task, dyads sorted balls of differing shapes and sizes. There were multiple ways to sort, and participants were not given an answer key. Based on previous research (Shatz, 1979; Yu et al., 2019), four types of questions were coded: many-possible-answers (e.g. “What should we do first?”), one-right-answer (e.g. “What color is that?”), instructive (e.g. “It goes there, right?”), and transient (e.g. “yeah?”).

There were cultural differences in the types of questions asked, and the pattern was context-specific. Chinese mothers asked a higher proportion of instructive questions than European American mothers, t(23.44) = 2.194, p = .04 in the puzzle task. In the sorting task, Chinese mothers asked more one-right-answer questions, t(19.96) = 2.34, p = .03. In contrast, European American mothers asked more transient questions in both the puzzle task, t(23.49) = 4.16, p < .001 and the sorting task, t(29.97) = -2.34, p = .03. Overall, the Chinese mothers in our sample tended to ask questions to provide instruction–in line with the cultural practice of directive guidance, whereas the European American mothers tended to promote verbal communication. Together, the caregivers engaged in diverse ways of question-asking, as informed by cultural ideologies and practices, to support children’s engagement in challenging activities and adjusted their strategies according to the nature of the task at hand. The finding underscores the importance of studying parental scaffolding with a sociocultural lens and the consideration of context specificity. Such an approach allows us to specify cultural ways of fostering strengths for learning and persistence through parent-child collaboration.

Authors

• Samantha Basch, University of California - Santa Cruz
  Presenting Author

• Su-hua Wang, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Yu Zhang, University of Chicago