Abstract
The study presents the Children’s Daily Activities-Parental Beliefs (CDA-PB) scale, a newly developed instrument providing parental assessment of the developmental significance of family-based, preschool children’s daily activities. These activities are considered as primary contexts for understanding children’s learning and development and parental beliefs are critical for both the organization of such activities as well as parents’ participation in them. Study informants were 383 mothers of preschool children attending daycare centres and kindergartens in the greater Athens area in Greece. Mothers completed a self-report questionnaire which included the CDA-PB and two other scales targeting at the report of the frequency of daily activities’ occurrence and mothers’ participation in them. Following a series of principal component analysis with varimax rotation the final form of the CDA-PB scale consisted of 30 items loaded on five components representing the perceived significance for certain types of activities, namely: “Household and self-care activities”, “Recurrent outings”, “Pre-academic activities”, “Play activities”, and “Home entertainment activities”. In addition, inter-correlations were revealed with the other two scales. Overall, the results are compatible with empirical evidence from different cultural settings and provide initial support for the use of this scale. Limitations of the present study and future research priorities are also addressed.
Highlights
The purpose of the present paper is to describe the development of a new measure, the Children’s Daily Activities-Parental Beliefs scale, which assesses the beliefs of Greek mothers about the developmental significance of family based, preschool children’s daily activities
We draw on two interrelated bodies of research: (1) the literature regarding the importance of placing child development and learning in the context of everyday activities, with special emphasis on patterns of parent-child interaction in the course of these activities and (2) the view that child participation and parent-child joint engagement in everyday activities are, to a great extent, linked with parental beliefs about their cultural and developmental significance
The analyses, that were executed for the three scales before proceeding to the examination of the construct validity of Children’s Daily Activities-Parental Beliefs (CDA-PB), showed that the assumption of normality was justified for all but one item (“Tells stories or how s/he spent the day”) of the parents’ participation in children’s activities scale
Summary
The purpose of the present paper is to describe the development of a new measure, the Children’s Daily Activities-Parental Beliefs scale, which assesses the beliefs of Greek mothers about the developmental significance of family based, preschool children’s daily activities. The importance of daily activities to children’s learning and development has been emphasized and documented in recent years under the influence of “socio-cultural” or “contextual” theories (Bronfenbrenner, 1995; Rogoff, 1990, 2003; Super & Harkness, 1986; Vygotsky 1934/1987, 1978). In this tradition, researchers claim that child development evolves in social interaction with more able partners in the context of culturally structured environments, which comprise cultural objects and means (toys, books etc.) as well as culturally meaningful activities. Everyday activities represent opportunities for children to www.ccsenet.org/jedp
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