Parental Concepts About Preschool Education

Abstract

Parents play an important role in the early childhood education and development. This fact is becoming increasingly popular. Parents transmit cultural values and expectations to their offspring and create for them an environment of competence. The child internalizes his parental expectations and tries to make the parents happy by conforming to them. This forms the developmental niche which has been conceptualized in terms of three components i) the physical and social settings in which the child lives ii) culturally regulated customs of child care and child rearing iii) psychology of the caretakers. The Childs developmental environment is shaped by parental ethno theories because the parents while taking decisions about their childrens socialization use these. Harkness and Super (1991) view parental ethno theories as expressed in the ways that parents assign their children to different kinds of physical and social settings. They also posit that many customs of child rearing function as instantiations of parental ethno theories and thus are of special importance in translating parental thinking into action that has developmental consequences. (excerpt)