Logo image
Back
Dominican, Salvadoran, and Chinese Immigrant Parents' Reasoning About School Readiness Skills
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Dominican, Salvadoran, and Chinese Immigrant Parents' Reasoning About School Readiness Skills

Brook E. Sawyer, Bridget V. Dever, Peggy Kong, Susan Sonnenschein, Cassandra Simons, Xiaoran Yu, Xinwei Zhang and Yin Cai
Child & youth care forum, v 51(1), pp 137-159
01 Feb 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-021-09623-3
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://hdl.handle.net/11603/21685View
SubmittedOpen Access (License Unspecified),  Open

Abstract

Psychology Psychology, Developmental Social Sciences
Background The importance of parental beliefs and practices related to children's school readiness skills is widely documented, but few studies explicitly focus on immigrant families. Further, no known studies have examined immigrant parents' beliefs about what skills children need to be successful in kindergarten. Objectives The overarching aim of this mixed-methods study was to investigate the school readiness beliefs of parents who are identified as immigrants in the United States. We examined the skills they prioritized as well as parents' reasoning about their prioritization. Methods Sixty-three immigrant parents from three different countries of origin-China, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador-completed a Q-sort and subsequent interview about their school readiness beliefs as well as a measure of acculturation. Results Results indicated two school readiness belief profiles. Parents in the first profile primarily emphasized academic skills; parents in the second profile primarily emphasized learning-related skills. Parents' country of origin predicted their profile membership. Six themes emerged to explain parents' school readiness beliefs. Although parents in the two profiles prioritized different skills, parents' reasoning about the importance of select skills showed many similarities. Conclusions Study findings provide a nuanced view of immigrant parents' school readiness beliefs, which is particularly useful for early childhood educators to consider as they develop culturally responsive family-school partnerships.

Metrics

13 Record Views
10 citations in Web of Science
10 citations in Scopus

Details

UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#3 Good Health and Well-Being

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Psychology, Developmental
Logo image