Bildiri Konusu:Okul Öncesi Eğitimde Sürdürülebilirlik
Do You Remember What We did at School Today?: Mother-child Joint Conversations After Participating in Composting Learning Activities
Everyday conversations with parents about shared experiences are a great way to build children’s agency in learning for sustainability. Once children develop an awareness of what is sustainable, they begin to think about it to identify the reasons for unsustainable habits in order to make responsible decisions in their daily lives (Samuelsson & Kaga 2008; Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2010). Since parents’ general conversational style and the level of elaboration potentially shape the flow and content of conversations about shared past events (Wang, 2003), verbal exchanges between children and more knowledgeable individuals can potentially sparke children’s interest in environmental dispositions, leading them to adopt different perspectives about sustainable practices. In this tradition, some parents tend to facilitate children’s learning and remembering by keeping conversation going with embellished descriptions; other parents talk less to their children and provide less information (Fivush et al., 2006)
The purpose of the present study is to determine whether there is a relationship between mothers’ conversational style and children’s contributions to mother-child joint conversations about composting learning activities. Twenty-three mothers participated with their 60- to 72-month-old preschoolers (12 boys, 11 girls) in a five-day learning process consisting of a series of learning activities (storytelling, music, science, play, math, language etc.) to explore composting as an everyday sustainable practice. Each learning activity was grounded regarding specified learning objectives (including cognitive, behavioral, and social-emotional) of Sustainable Development Goal 12 (UNESCO, 2017). At the end of each activity day, participating mothers were asked to talk with their child at a convenient time that evening for five to ten minutes about the day’s activity process in a way that was natural to them. In the context of coding, the focus was on elaborations, repetitions and use of total words by mothers and children in shared conversation. Here, elaborations refer to a score that includes the total number of open-ended questions, yes/no questions asked by participating mothers and children and the number of context statements and positive and negative evaluations participants made. In addition, repetitions refer to a score that includes the total number of repetitions of open-ended questions, yes/no questions asked by participating mothers and children, and context statements made by participants (Fivush & Vasudeva, 2002).
Concerning the study variables, bivariate correlation analysis showed that multiple positive relations were evident in children’s variables during mother-child joint conversations. Mothers’ total open-ended questions during conversations were highly associated with children’s total open-ended questions (r=.49, p<.01), children’s context statements (r=.66, p<.05), children’s total elaborations (r=.68, p<.05), and children’s total words (r=.49, p<.01). Together, mothers’ total elaborations were significantly correlated with children’s total open-ended questions (r=.54, p<.05) and children’s total elaborations (r=.82, p<.05). To add, mothers’ overall elaborations is strongly associated with overall repetitions (r=.64, p<.05), yet mothers’ repetitiveness indicated no significant relation with any child variables. The findings of this work suggested that mothers’ conversational variables were associated with children’s contributions to mother-child joint conversations conducted at the end of each activity day. Open-ended questions provided by mothers potentially encouraged children to stay alive in joint conversations to reflect on what they experienced and explored about composting. In this regard, Wh- questions provided by participating mothers were helpful for children to reflect on the “what, where, why, and how” aspects of composting learning activities discussed that turned into a memory-sharing time. In the current study, open-ended questions, yes/no questions, context statements, and evaluations were naturally provided depending each mothers’ conversational style that they uniquely possessed. Thus, mothers who were more elaborative with their children in joint conversations had children who stayed alive in conversations with more open-ended question, context statements and evaluations related to composting learning activities.
References
Fivush, R., & Vasudeva, A. (2002). Remembering to relate: Socioemotional correlates of mother– child reminiscing. Journal of Cognition and Development, 3, 73–90.
Fivush, R., Haden, C. A., & Reese, E. (2006). Elaborating on elaborations: Role of maternal reminiscing style in cognitive and socioemotional development. Child Development, 77(6), 1568-1588.
Samuelsson. I. P., & Kaga, Y. (2008). The Contribution of Early Childhood Education to a Sustainable Society. Paris: UNESCO.
Siraj-Blatchford, J., Smith, K. C., & Samuelsson, I. P. (2010). Education for Sustainable Development in Early Years. OMEP.
UNESCO. (2017). Education for Sustainable Development Goals Learning Objectives. Paris, France: UNESCO.
Wang, Q. (2013). The autobiographical self in time and culture. Oxford University Press.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Early childhood education for sustainability, mothers’ conversational style, preschool children