The Role of Previous Mother-Child Scaffolding in Head Start Children’s Structuring of Problem-Solving Tasks With a Peer

Abstract

This study further extends scaffolding research to mother-child dyads (N = 51) in poverty, examining relationships between maternal scaffolding and 4-year-old Head Start children’s own later scaffolding behaviors. At Time 1, experimental group children received maternal scaffolding during problem-solving tasks, whereas control group children carried out the tasks without assistance. At Time 2, all children provided scaffolding to a novice adult who acted as a peer unfamiliar with the task. Verbal and nonverbal scaffolding strategies were coded, and children’s verbal skills and social competence were measured. The simple presence or absence of earlier scaffolding did not differentiate child tutors. However, tutoring strategies used by experimental group children during the child-novice problem-solving task were similar to those used earlier by their mothers. After controlling for children’s verbal skills and social competence, mothers’ use of active nonverbal strategies (but not active verbal strategies) was predictive of similar behaviors in their children.