Twenty-fifth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

This study examines everyday scaffolding styles in Chinese and US families, as well as children’s responses to the scaffolding styles. Forty Chinese and US mothers and their 4-year olds (half girls and half boys) participated in the study. The mother-child dyads were asked to play with a classic Chicco Gazebo toy in their homes. The mother-child interactions were video-recorded, transcribed, and coded with a scheme developed by Wang, Bernas, and Eberhard (2005). The results suggest that mothers in the two cultural groups used distinct interactive styles. Chinese mothers initiated more task-related interactions, took more interaction turns, and elaborated more on children’s initiations than US mothers. Moreover, Chinese mothers used immediate scaffolding (e.g., immediate correction and demonstration) and the US mothers used deferred scaffolding (e.g., asking questions and suggesting alternatives). Furthermore, the study indicates that children did not always passively comply with the strategies used by their caregivers. They actively transformed adult strategies by elaborating on and appropriating them. The findings of this study urge educators to make efforts to understand the complexity of students’ everyday home learning environments and to maximize their learning potential by taking advantage of the funds of knowledge they developed at home.