The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between mothers' beliefs about knowledge acquisition and mothers' teaching strategies. It was also examined to see whether mothers' beliefs about knowledge acquisition and mothers' teachin...
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between mothers' beliefs about knowledge acquisition and mothers' teaching strategies. It was also examined to see whether mothers' beliefs about knowledge acquisition and mothers' teaching strategies were related to preschoolers' problem-solving abilities.
The sample consisted of 75 preschoolers(53 to 71 months) and their mothers who resided in Seoul and Gyung-Gi Do. Mothers were interviewed to report their beliefs about knowledge acquisition and their teaching strategies. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. In order to assess preschoolers' problem solving abilities, Sink & Float activities of Project Spectrum were used. All the activities of preschoolers were videotaped. Inter-rater agreement was 89-94%.
The results of this study were as follows :
1. Majority of the mothers' beliefs about knowledge acquisition were cognitive process(27%), direct instruction(25%), feedback(19%), and experimentation(14%). Unemployed mothers revealed to have more beliefs in experimentation than employed mothers.
2. More than half of the mothers' teaching strategies were rational authoritative strategy(52%), followed by distancing strategy(23%), and direct authoritative strategy(11%). Mothers of first-born child preferred more direct authoritative teaching strategy than those of second-born or third-born child.
3. The more mothers oriented toward beliefs in experimentation, the less they preferred direct authoritative strategies.
4. Mothers' beliefs in cognitive process related positively to their preschoolers' problem solving abilities.
These results, in part, confirmed that mothers' beliefs about knowledge acquisition affected their teaching strategies and could affect their preschoolers' problem solving abilities.