It’s All Relative: Sibling and Parent Teaching in Early Childhood

Research investigating family teaching is limited, and the recent focus on teaching in naturalistic settings has examined sibling-directed teaching when parents do not take an active role. Additionally, the family teaching literature has been widely devoted to studying teaching strategies. Examining conceptual and procedural knowledge provides insight on the ways families co-construct meaning and scaffold learning. The goal of this study was to compare parents’ and siblings’ conceptual and procedural knowledge use during naturalistic teaching episodes in the home. Thirty-seven middle-class families from southwestern Ontario, Canada were observed over two years as they engaged in six 90-minute interaction sessions. The present study examined data from the second time point, when children were four and six years of age. Parental teaching sequences were identified; previously coded sibling teaching sequences were also employed. Parental and sibling teaching sequences were coded for conceptual subcategories (social conventional behavior; game discussions; discussions surrounding language, literacy, and math concepts; and explaining concepts) and procedural knowledge subcategories (game procedures; other procedures). Results demonstrated no significant differences between mothers and fathers in their conceptual and procedural teaching. However, parents taught proportionally more conceptual knowledge than siblings, and siblings taught proportionally more procedural knowledge compared to parents. Parents taught more social conventional behaviors, whereas siblings taught more language, literacy, and math concepts. Siblings also taught more other procedures than parents. Findings surrounding parents’ and siblings’ knowledge use, overall and by subcategory, across context and initiation are further discussed in light of current theory about teaching