|
Article Excerpt
The four articles in this issue present an exciting array of findings linking parental educational levels with their children's subsequent academic accomplishments, in some cases many years later. They reflect and exemplify the conceptual, methodological, and analytic advances that have characterized the most pioneering developmental science of the past two decades. They also reveal some of the challenges that lie ahead in our efforts to provide a fuller understanding of the nature and sources of academic growth.
Contemporary Trends in Developmental Science
Over the past two decades, a systematic shift has occurred in the dominant theoretical, methodological, and statistical approaches to understanding human development. Theoretical conceptualizations have adopted a more complex multilevel, interactive view of developmental change in which children are embedded in a larger context of influences spanning more distal (socioeconomic and sociocultural) to more proximal (parenting, schooling, individual) influences (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Research strategies have shifted considerably to reflect these new conceptual priorities. Laboratory-based and largely cross-sectional experimental studies with relatively limited samples and few variables have given way to large, even national and international, longitudinal studies with samples that are more representative, or at least normative, and incorporate many variables at different levels of analysis (Morrison & Ornstein, 1996). Fortuitously, development of analytic strategies, such as structural equation modeling (SEM) and hierarchical linear modeling, catalyzed the successful implementation of these more demanding methodologies, providing statistical tools for responding to the increased complexity and sophistication of measurement (Arbuckle, 2006; Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). Finally, there has been a subtler but nonetheless distinct shift in the focus of inquiry in recent years, from a universalist focus on abstract processes amenable to laboratory study (memory, attention, attachment) to more applied areas of focus (schooling, parenting) where the interplay of child in context is more fruitfully revealed and the complex multilevel, interactive nature of developmental change can be fleshed out empirically (Morrison & Ornstein, 1996).
All of these trends are admirably documented in the present articles, with the specific focus being parenting and educational development. To understand the nature and contribution of the articles more systematically, I think it would be helpful to provide a conceptual framework for parenting within which the findings can be placed. The framework will also, I hope, highlight some issues for the future of developmental science.
What Is Parenting?
One common theme across the articles was an attempt to link more distal variables, such as educational attainment in parents, to educational accomplishments in their children, even decades later, by examining potential mediators both in the child and in the parenting behaviors they experience. Until recently, the study of parenting has been somewhat piecemeal or idiosyncratic, lacking a unifying conceptualization. In an effort to provide a theoretical framework for the study of parenting for literacy, we developed a working conceptualization of parenting and its interplay with child characteristics as they shape developmental trajectories in early literacy growth (Morrison & Cooney, 2002; Hindman & Morrison, 2009). The conceptualization, together with findings from a recent test of the model (Hindman & Morrison, 2009), are presented in Figure 1. As can be seen, there are three major dimensions of parenting that impact children's literacy skills: the learning environment, warmth/responsivity, and management/discipline. There are two sets of child skills in the model: language/literacy skills and cooperation/self-control skills.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
Dimensions of parenting. In the Hindman & Morrison (2009) study, 229 mostly middle-class families and their children were followed longitudinally from preschool to second grade. Parenting behaviors and attitudes were assessed via direct home observation and questionnaires. Measures of child language, cognitive, and social skills were taken twice annually, in autumn and spring of the school year. Factor analyses of parent questionnaire responses revealed three independent dimensions. The learning environment...
|
