Young Children's Engagement and Learning Opportunities in a Cooking Activity with Parents and Older Siblings

Abstract

Parents teach their children through informal social interactions in a process known as guided participation (Rogoff, 1990). Although most research focuses on parent-child dyads, young children also learn from older siblings and parents through shared participation in daily activities. Utilizing a structured observational design, the authors compared 15 triads (parent, preschooler, and older sibling) with 12 dyads (parent and preschooler) engaged in a cooking activity at home. The findings indicate that parents used the cooking activity as an occasion for teaching children about literacy, and basic mathematical concepts and skills. Analyses of parent-child interactions across groups indicated that parents did more teaching of numeracy and general skills in the dyadic condition, and that younger children gave more correct responses to parent guidance when the older sibling was not present. Parents in the triadic condition engaged in more complex literacy-related teaching of older siblings. More role negotiation, frustration and conflict occurred in triads than in dyads. The findings suggest that the presence of an older sibling has implications for adults’ support of children’s emergent literacy, numeracy, and social interactions in everyday activities performed at home.