Home–school differences in beliefs, support, and control during public pre-kindergarten and their link to children's kindergarten readiness

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Abstract

This study examines the prevalence of home–school match in childrearing beliefs and socialization practices (control and support) and their relation to ethnicity and readiness skills of children (n = 310) making the transition from publicly sponsored Pre-k to kindergarten. Home–school match was operationalized both as a continuous absolute measure and as categories of match or mismatch. Overall, home–school match was more prevalent than mismatch. However, the results corroborate previous ethnographic studies showing higher rates of home–school mismatch among African Americans and Latinos than Euro Americans. Controlling for race and socio-economic status, parents’ beliefs and practices predicted readiness but teachers’ did not. Absolute indicators of home–school differences were not related to kindergarten readiness. Directional indicators revealed that children attained greater skills when parents and teachers matched on child-centered beliefs, low control, and high support. Contrary to the cultural match hypothesis, home–school mismatch was associated with better outcomes than match in the case of adult-centered beliefs, control, and low support.

Introduction

The nature and significance of differences between home and school environments have long been a topic of interest to scholars concerned about children's adaptation to school. As far back as 1982, Shirley Brice Heath published findings from a program of ethnographic observations that revealed striking differences between teachers and African American parents in discourse style, particularly regarding the role and use of questions in adult–child communication. The role of home–school match is important because of its possible implications for children's early adaptation to and success at school. In recent years, this issue has become even more compelling as a result of the growing ethnic and cultural diversity of students in our public schools and the lack of corresponding diversity in a teaching workforce that is predominantly Euro American (Clifford et al., 2005, National Center for Education Statistics, 2000, National Center for Education Statistics, 2009). Euro Americans make up about 83.5% of the teaching workforce, whereas African Americans and Latinos constitute less than seven percent each (National Center for Education Statistics, 2009). These statistics suggest that once children enter school, they will most likely be matched with a teacher who has a different racial/ethnic background than them. We argue, however, that although much of the home–school mismatch literature focuses on race/ethnicity, what may be most important for children's academic success is the degree of match on the culturally rooted beliefs and practices of parents and teacher. Therefore, this paper explores the extent to which parental beliefs about children and their support and control practices match those of their children's teachers. First, the review provides evidence of home–school mismatch by situating the construct within the historical literature on racial/ethnic differences in discourse styles and practices, beliefs, and values related to behavioral expectations for children. Then, we examine the literature on how similarity and difference between home and school in beliefs and practices are related to the academic and social outcomes of preschool children. Finally, we present our theoretically driven, re-conceptualization of home–school match/mismatch, quantified through the calculation of absolute difference and directional difference scores.

The culture of American schools tends to reflect and be more consonant with the beliefs and practice of Euro American homes (Rogoff, 2003). Therefore, for ethnic minority children, the rich knowledge set, values, relational styles, and behavioral repertoires cultivated and adaptive at home under one set of socialization beliefs and practices often do not match up well with those in educational settings (Bowman, 2002). Heath's (1982) original work which focused principally on Euro American–African American differences in language use, and in particular adult questioning of children, brings this point home with striking clarity. She observed how African American mothers are less likely than Euro American mothers to utilize forms of discourse that involve question-asking routines that are typical in schools (Heath, 1996). In addition, African American children are not regarded as information givers or conversational partners by their parents. Whereas teachers posed questions calling for attributes or labels of objects and specific details of events out of their context, adults in the African American community posed questions about whole events or objects, their causes, and effects (Heath, 1982). Heath's observations were essentially replicated in a rural sample by Vernon-Feagans (1996). In contrast to the suppositions of mismatch between African American homes and schools is the situation of Euro Americans for whom a strong match is often posited (Rogoff, 2003). For example, Rogoff (2003) observed that Euro American families interact with their Pre-k children by using “school-like” discourse styles and talking to them “like a book” before they even learn to read. Given the demographic profiles of the nation's teachers, it would not be surprising to find that language use, the styles of questioning, the nature of adult–child interaction, and regimes for controlling social behavior observed among teachers more closely resembled those observed in the homes of Euro American parents than they resemble those observed in ethnic minority homes (Michaels, 1981).

Early formulations of the mismatch hypothesis centered on differences in language and discourse styles. However, analysis of home–school mismatch has been extended to a range of issues including practices, beliefs, and values related to behavioral expectations, teaching, and discipline strategies, adult–child interaction styles, and conceptions of developmental competence and maturity. For example, mismatch may occur with respect to the emphasis by the home and the school on individuality, independence, and competition, as opposed to embracing interdependence and cooperation, and is further reflected in valuing verbal–intensive interactions and reliance on inductive discipline practices (Rogoff, 2003, Vernon-Feagans et al., 2004). Like schools, Euro American parents tend to value an inductive approach to behavior management in which teaching is conceived as “child directed” and discipline is articulated as “supporting” desired behavior rather than punishing misbehavior. In contrast, Delpit (1995) and others have noted that minority parents tend to use a directive teaching style, and impose explicit sanctions to manage children's misbehavior. For example, African American parents commonly use explicit direction and control practices, whereas Euro American, middle-class parents rely on indirect control practices based on a combination of elicitation strategies that involve questions, explanations, and inferential reasoning (Ballenger, 1999). Puerto Rican mothers, too, are more likely than Euro American mothers to emphasize the need to exercise parental authority rather than the modeling of positive behaviors (Harwood, Schoelmerich, Schulze, & Gonzalez, 1999). Keels (2009) notes a similar pattern of differences among African American, Euro American, and Latinos in parental beliefs and practices.

With respect to teaching practices at home, African American families are also more likely than Euro American families to value memorized information and direct teaching of nominal knowledge (i.e., ability to name letters, numbers, body parts; Barbarin et al., 2008, Nord et al., 2000). Similar observations have been made of Latino parents who emphasize correct performance of reading related tasks (i.e., writing or naming letters correctly), rather than focusing on the meaning of text (Gallimore & Goldenberg, 2001). Harwood et al. (1999) also observed that Puerto Rican mothers directly structured their infants’ behavior more often than Euro American mothers during a teaching task.

Given the confounding of socio-economic status (SES) and ethnicity, challenges are often raised about whether ethnic differences are in fact attributable mostly to SES (Barbarin, 1999). However, both ethnicity and social class appear to be independently related to beliefs and practices. For example, at each SES level there is an identical pattern in which African American parents are lower in their use of supportive strategies and higher in their use of controlling practices than Euro American and Latino families (Barbarin, 2004). For this reason, our analyses will control for SES when looking at congruence across racial groups, and control for both SES and race in using home–school match/mismatch to predict child outcomes.

It is important to note that practice differences represent preferences that do not arise out of a vacuum but in response to specific demands within the social context in which parents are raising children. Bowman (2002) argues that most children, including children from minority backgrounds and economically disadvantaged families, develop the skills and attributes that enable them to thrive in their particular communities and homes. In preparing children for life, parents take a broad view and foster in their children a range of competencies they deem necessary for safety and success in their environment (Ogbu, 1981). Similarly, Rogoff (2003) argues that adults guided by their diverse cultural values and ideologies have different socialization goals and employ varied methods for accomplishing and assessing progress toward desired developmental outcomes. Most children acquire the competencies valued and used in their communities, including language, symbols, categorization of objects, and appropriate interaction styles with adults and peers. However, the particular language and symbols they learn, the objects worthy of categorization, and the specific patterns of interactions are determined by culture and the social context (Rogoff, 2003). The effect of cultural beliefs on socialization goals and practices has motivated this examination of home–school match/mismatch to include beliefs as well as practices.

Even though claims about the existence and impact of mismatch between home and schools have been disseminated widely, their persuasiveness is still based largely on a few compelling ethnographic studies (Delpit, 1995). Quantitative analyses corroborating these qualitative observations have been rare. Nevertheless, examining match between home and school is important because a match may confer advantage and facilitate the adjustment of children who come from home environments that resemble the school's and help explain why some children from homes which do not match with the school fare poorly (Dee, 2004). When there is a home–school mismatch, children must work to negotiate the divergent rules, expectations, values, discourse styles, and modes of control the exist in each setting (Keels, 2009). This condition may burden children with great demands for accommodation if they are to be successful in the new setting. Context-specific competencies are adequate, until the child is confronted with different goals, practices, and beliefs about how they should be, talk, and behave. When children enter school, they clearly must discern and learn the school value systems, control regimes, behavioral expectations, and discourse styles (Brooks-Gunn and Markman, 2005, Coll and Pachter, 2000). As noted above, children from families that espouse the same beliefs or similar cultural values, mores, and expectations for behaviors and interactions as schools are more likely to adapt successfully than children raised in families that diverge from schools (Keels, 2009, Sonnenschein et al., 2005, Stipek et al., 1992). For instance, when similar language styles, expectations, rules, and regimes of discipline exist in both home and school, a child's experience in the classroom is likely to have a ring of familiarity to it, thus lessening the strain of adjustment to the new setting. Conversely, children with parents who highly value self-care and practical knowledge may experience a much different emphasis at school where the importance of inferential reasoning and self-regulation are underscored (Barbarin et al., 2008). Unacknowledged differences between home and school about what constitutes critical skill sets means that some children may start school less familiar with the culture, discourse styles and expectations within classrooms than many schools have recognized. In this way, a lack of home–school match results in many children, particularly children of color, being less familiar with the ways and expectations of school.

If schools reflect and propagate the values and expectations of the majority culture (Euro American), this may make the adjustment to school more challenging for some children. In spite of these sometimes stark differences, many children learn enough to negotiate the two environments successfully (Keels, 2009). For others, we speculate that the home–school divide in skill sets, relational styles, and practices may be too wide an expanse to bridge and lead to struggles that undermine success. If this is correct, children who enter a classroom sharing the same or similar cultural values and expectations for behaviors and interactions and who have culturally based knowledge and skill sets valued by teachers are more likely to make a smooth transition than children who come from home environments that are dissimilar (Rogoff, 2003).

The notion of home–school mismatch has received a great deal of attention precisely because it has been proffered as a way of accounting for ethnic achievement gaps (Delpit, 1995, Villegas, 1988). For this reason, an empirical analysis of home–school mismatch would be incomplete without examining the strength of its relationship to academic competencies. In an era of increasing economic and ethnic diversity among American families, a match of beliefs, values, and practices as children navigate across familial and school settings may be a salient factor for young children's success in the early years of school. Teachers rate children as less competent when they perceive differences with parents on values related to discipline, reading, writing, math, and parents’ role in assisting with homework (Hauser-Cram, Sirin, & Stipek, 2003). It has also been evidenced that teachers are less likely to facilitate children's story-telling when their discourse styles differ (Michaels, 1981). For many children in the United States, navigation of this mismatch is likely to first occur within a pre-kindergarten classroom and may have ramifications for academic functioning in early elementary school grades. Connections between home and school are considered to be key contributors to early school adjustment, providing a consistent web of support during a challenging time of change (Rimm-Kaufman & Pianta, 2005). When there is a distinct lack of continuity across these settings, children can be faced with the difficult task of adapting to vastly different expectations and socialization experiences, possibly contributing to early academic and social struggles.

Up to this point, our discussion of attitudinal and practice differences between schools and homes has been framed using the typical rubric of match or mismatch. Conceptually, mismatch takes the form of person–environment fit (P–E; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998), which forecasts poor adjustment when individual qualities deviate from the qualities required, privileged, or supported by the environment. P–E fit theories are neutral and agnostic with respect to imputing moral correctness or value to the qualities of either the individual or the environment. Nevertheless, P–E fit theories predict that problems will arise to the extent that families do not replicate the salient qualities of school environments. Though commonly used, mismatch frames the discussion narrowly in terms of absolute differences between home and school and fails to capture potentially important details about the direction of these differences. Specifically, mismatch theories assert that absolute differences between home and school lead to adverse effects but they do not address the potential importance of the direction of the differences, viz., who is high and who is low on a particular belief or practice. This means that they cannot account for the possibility that mismatch between the home and school might be more desirable than match, because one setting can compensate for deficiencies in the other. Though helpful in many respects, the mismatch approach simplifies what may be more complex relations that could be detected by incorporating directional differences. By limiting its conceptual scope to absolute differences, the term mismatch omits information on the direction of that difference which may turn out to be critical in determining the impact of home–school differences on children.

In this paper, we argue that although discussions of home and school environments have been cast largely in terms of match vs. mismatch, the nature and direction of the match or the mismatch should not be ignored. For example, the present study compares parents and teachers on support in interactions with children. Match is operationalized in a way that captures polarity and distinguishes between matches that exist when both parents and teachers are high in support from matches that exist when parents and teachers are both low in support. Similarly, when mismatches occur, we are able to distinguish whether it is the parent or teacher who is high or low. These distinctions have both theoretical and practical significance. In the case of support, we would predict that matched high support would lead to favorable outcomes, but matched low support would not. In the case of mismatch, a salubrious environment might compensate for a deleterious environment by neutralizing or making up for what is lacking in the other. Moreover, when a mismatch occurs, the ability to distinguish which party is high and which is low may prove to be valuable. It is conceivable that for qualities such as control, mismatched environments have the same effect as matched environment. For example, highly controlling disciplinary styles observed in African American families do not seem to produce the same negative effect on children's behavior that it does in other ethnic groups (Deater-Deckard & Dodge, 1997). As a consequence, high parental control and low teacher control might lead to outcomes that are equally positive as when both home and school are low in control. Thus, incorporating the notion of directionality also permits the theory to test whether the effect of being high or low on a quality may differ depending on the environment.

This report examines absolute home–school mismatch as it is conventionally defined in order to situate our findings within the existing discourse on ethnic differences in beliefs and practices compared to schools. In addition, we will test a directional conception of home–school match and its relation to children's kindergarten outcomes as way of extending the current home–school mismatch debate. To accomplish these aims, we quantify the match between home and school using both absolute differences and directional categories. The paper also analyzes ethnic group differences in the prevalence of match observed between the home and school environments of children enrolled in publicly sponsored early childhood programs. Beliefs, support, and control practices have been selected because aside from language, these are issues around which concerns about home–school mismatch have most often been expressed (Rogoff, 2003). Finally, even if quantitative evidence of home–school mismatch is found, the case for its theoretical and practical relevance can be more compelling if there is evidence that it is also linked to children's academic performance.

Therefore, a final issue concerns the broader significance of home–school match. Skeptics about the cultural mismatch hypothesis may cite a lack of empirical evidence demonstrating that home–school match or mismatch matters. In truth, though we have ample evidence of diversity of beliefs and practices along ethnic and cultural lines, with a few exceptions, evidence linking home–school match to children's academic or socio-emotional outcomes is limited (Brooks-Gunn and Markman, 2005, Heath, 1982, Phillips et al., 1998). Despite its putative importance, scholarly efforts to determine the relation of home–school match to academic achievement and social development have been slowed by conceptual ambiguity and an absence of operational definitions and adequate assessments of the construct. Importantly, questions remain about which domains of match across home and school might be most critical for children's academic and socio-emotional development?

Quantitative analyses examine the extent of home–school match in an ethnically diverse group of children who attended publicly sponsored Pre-k. They also assess whether the match/mismatch is related to children's academic and socio-emotional competence at the beginning of kindergarten. Specifically, a quantitative approach is applied to operationalizing home–school mismatch, using self-reported authoritarian vs. child-centered beliefs and observed socialization practices (warmth/support, control) for both parents and teachers. This measurement approach makes it possible to examine the effects of the absolute difference between parents and teachers, as well as the effects of the direction of those differences (e.g., low teacher warmth/support and high parent warmth/support). Accordingly this research questions addresses questions of the prevalence and effects on children's school readiness of home–school match/mismatch. Specifically these three questions are:

  • 1.

    What is the overall prevalence of home–school match and mismatch in public Pre-k programs on socialization beliefs and practices?

  • 2.

    Does the prevalence of match vary by racial/ethnic group membership?

  • 3.

    Is home–school match in Pre-k related to children's academic and socio-emotional competence at the beginning of kindergarten?

The literature reviewed points to a likelihood of mismatch between home and school environments on the dimensions of authoritarian beliefs, support practices, and control practices for some families more than others (Deater-Deckard and Dodge, 1997). Pre-k teachers as representatives of the school environments are more likely to express child-centered beliefs, demonstrate warmth/support, and employ control practices best described as inductive, responsive to child initiation, and characterized by indirect commands (Rogoff, 2003). Some groups of parents, notably African American and Latino, are likely to be very warm and supportive but express traditional, authoritarian, adult-centered beliefs and use more directive control strategies (e.g., explicit direct orders, sanctions).

The theorizing on question three (e.g., person-environment fit and home–school mismatch hypothesis) suggests that mismatch on authoritarian beliefs, support practices, and control practices will be associated with poorer socio-emotional and academic competence in children. However, low support, high control and authoritarian beliefs may by themselves be inversely related to readiness. Accordingly our extension of the mismatch hypothesis to include directionality of difference suggests that some matches (high warmth/support, low control, low authoritarian beliefs) will be associated with better outcomes than either type of mismatch, which in turn will be better than the other similarities (low warmth/support, high control, high authoritarian beliefs). Thus contrary to the hypothesis that home–school mismatch contributes to poor outcomes, specific types of mismatch may be associated with better child outcomes than match because one setting may compensate for what is lacking in the other. Given scant empirical basis on which to argue either way, these analyses are exploratory and hypotheses are preliminary.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants for this study were drawn from a study of six state-funded preschool programs: the National Center for Early Development and Learning's Multi-State Study of Pre-kindergarten (Multi-State Study). The purpose of this study was to describe Pre-k programs in states with large publicly-funded programs. The Multi-State Study involved a stratified sampling of 40 Pre-k sites within each state during the 2001–2002 school year. Within each Pre-k site, one classroom was randomly selected to

Results

Results from descriptive statistics are first presented, focusing first on the absolute difference scores between parents and teachers and then examining patterns across racial/ethnic groups. Frequency data from the directional, categorical indicators are then presented, again followed by racial/ethnic comparisons of these categorical data. Two approaches to regression analyses are summarized, testing the extent to which parent and teacher match and mismatch on authoritarian beliefs, support

Rates and patterns of home–school match and mismatch

This study began with questions about the prevalence of home–school match on beliefs and practices, about ethnic differences in prevalence, and about whether a match in Pre-k was associated with readiness skills by the time the child entered kindergarten. To address these questions, we used two measures of home–school match. The first was a continuous index of the absolute difference between parent and teacher on authoritarian beliefs, support practices, and control practices. The second was a

Conclusion

Educational attainment is undoubtedly valued across cultural communities. Nevertheless, ethnic groups and social classes vary in the practices they use to motivate achievement and nurture academic skills and the extent to which parents must balance their aspirations for children's school success with other life demands. The formation of supportive and well-aligned home–school relationships augurs well for early school adjustment (Taylor, Clayton, & Rowley, 2004). In other words, successful

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