PRIMARY-GRADE STUDENTS' KNOWLEDGE AND THINKING ABOUT FAMILIES

Journal of Social Studies Research, Spring 2005 by Brophy, Jere, Alleman, Janet

Abstract

K-3 students were interviewed to elicit their knowledge and thinking (including misconceptions) about families, a major topic in primary social studies. Along with valid knowledge, the students displayed significant knowledge gaps and misconceptions about marriage, kinship relations, and family life in the past, in other cultures, and in urban vs. rural communities within the contemporary United States. These findings are discussed with reference to implications for teaching about families in primary social studies, emphasizing commonalities rooted 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, both by building on their accurate knowledge and by clearing up misconceptions. To do so, however, we need rich description of developments in what children typically know (or think they know) about the content. The authors have generated such information by interviewing K-3 students about families and other cultural universals emphasized in the primary social studies curriculum (Brophy & Alleman, in press).

Procedures

Interviews on families were conducted with 96 students, 24 in each of Grades K-3, stratified within each grade by prior achievement levels and gender. The students attended the public schools of a lower middle/working class bedroom suburb of a small city (population about 160,000). The suburb is average or slightly above average on most socioeconomic and educational indices.

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

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

Research on Children's Knowledge About Families

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

Fischer et al. (1984) suggested that children develop through four stages from concrete to abstract levels of understanding of kinship concepts.

Step One: Concrete categorical concepts. Children begin to use kinship terms as social labels at about age three. Typically they use only the most common terms (mother, father, grandmother, uncle, etc.) and apply them to people 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 boy, without understanding that in order to be a mother, a woman must have a son or daughter.

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

Step Three: Later relational concepts. Beginning about age six or seven, children start to coordinate multiple kinship roles into a "web of relations." They begin to understand that one person can occupy many kinship roles at once (be one person's wife, another's mother, etc.). They begin to move away from the "closeness" definition of family toward a kinship-based definition, often mentioning a third person when asked to explain the relationship between two people. They also begin to include relatives such as grandparents and cousins on their family lists, and to understand that a family member who moves out of the home still remains related.