The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the expressed attitudes of surrogate parents toward family life and child-rearing practices and the dominative and socially integrative behaviors of the surrogate parents as they interacted with preschool children.The population of this study consisted of fifteen (15) randomly selected undergraduate students enrolled in the class, "Methods and Materials in the Kindergarten," EDEL 440g, spring quarter, 1975. The population hereafter is identified as the "participants." The Elementary Education Department of Teachers College, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, for several years has maintained a classroom for three-, four-, and five-year old children as a laboratory for child study, The participants, in conjunction with the kindergarten education class, interacted with preschool aged children on a regular basis in the classroom maintained for that purpose, ''The Living Learning Laboratory for Young Children," and hereafter identified as the LLL. All students enrolled in the kindergarten education class (50) were administered the Parent Attitude Research Instrument (PARI), and 15 were randomly selected to be members of the data p.opulation.The PARI consisted of 23 attitudinal scales and was selected to measure the expressed attitudes of the participants in three major areas: Authoritarian-Control; Hostility-Rejection; and Democratic Practices. Participants recorded their responses to 115 items on a Likert type instrument with each item having four categories of agreement-disagreement. Separate answer sheets were computer scored by assigning scores fourthrough-one. This process yielded a numerical score for each participant in three attitudinal areas.The Behavior Observation Blank, developed and utilized by H. H. Anderson in a series of longitudinal studies, was selected to measure the participants' dominative and socially integrative behaviors. Trained observers functioning in excess of a 70% level of agreement and working in pairs analyzed and recorded the dominative and integrative behavior of each of the 15 participants. Participants were observed in 20-minute nonconsecutive periods. The first 100 recorded behaviors of each participant were placed in dominative and integrative behavior categories, each behavior totaled separately, and then the integrative subtotal was divided by the dominative subtotal. The subsequent answer was identified as the I/D ratio.The Pearson product moment coefficient of correlation was computed to test the relationship between each of the three attitudes and the I/D ratio. The relationship between each attitude and the I/D ratio was riot statistically significant at the .05 level off confidence and the null hypotheses were accepted.It would appear from the results of this study that the expressed attitudes of the data population toward family life and child-rearing practices did not correlate at a level of statistical significance with the observed dominative and socially integrative behaviors. Therefore, on the basis of the findings of this study, it would not be possible to predict the behavior of the data population on the basis of PARI scores.In this study all I/D ratios in all cases exceeded 1.0 with a mean I/D ratio of 2.47. The latter figure can be translated into behavioral terms: for each dominative behavior there were approximately two-and-a-half integrative behaviors. The figure, 2.47, stands in contrast to previous studies in which the dominative behaviors exceeded integrative behaviors. To summarize, the PARI was not effective in this study in predicting the dominative and integrative behavior, and the null hypotheses were accepted.Previous attempts to develop an attitude measure that will predict the classroom behavior of teachers have been unsuccessful. Perhaps the time has arrived for educators to rethink the problem and develop pre-service teacher preparation programs that combine participatory and theoretical experiences with children accompanied by supervisory comments at a level relevant to the recipient.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/175841 |
| Date | January 1975 |
| Creators | Dickerson, Bill |
| Contributors | Pogue, Betty J. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | iii, 65 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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