Abstract:

There are complex scientific theories that explain human learning from early childhood to adolescence (Piaget, Erikson, Vygotsky, Kohlberg). However, there is a gap in understanding how parents view learning of their children. This study focuses on parents´ understanding of their children´s learning within the framework of their cognitive and social development. In particular, this study concerns the learning of very young children, aged 0 – 3 years, in Slovak families.

Parents´ develop rather complex implicit knowledge about their children. Implicit theories are a priori beliefs (Placks, 2017), which constitute more or less coherent structure of reflecting the real word (Ong, Zaki, & Goodman, 2015). Parents create and use a rage of implicit theories related to parenting, e.g., about how to protect health of little children, how and when to feed them, or manage their dressing (Hembacher & Frank, 2020). Among them, of significant importance are those ones that explain the learning of little children.

This study asked two questions:
(1) How do parents of very young children organize their parental responsibilities to support the child´s learning?
(2) How do parents conceive the learning behavior of their children? Participants of the study were Slovak mothers and fathers of children between 0 and 3 years. The sample consisted of 25 parents who participated in five focus group interviews, with groups ranging from 3 to 7 participants. Interviews were video- and audio-recorded, and then verbatim transcribed to form interview transcripts. These transcripts were then analyzed using the constructivist grounded theory principles (Charmaz, 2012).

The following four core categories were constituted that describe parental implicit theories of children´s learning.
1. Onset of learning. Parents are certain that some actions (like the mother's singing to the child at a very early age) has a formative effect on the child. If the child responds to the action (in voice, in this case), it is a clear indicator that learning is taking place and that it has an effect on the child.
2. Learning through ritualized activities. Some skills, like learning to hold the spoon while eating, require long period of repeated efforts of the parent before it is learned by children. Therefore, parents considered them explicit learning.
3. Observational learning. The majority of children´s learning takes place through observation. The child watches the behavior of a parent or sibling, internalizes it and then repeats it in identical situations.
4. Learning through absorption. The immerse learning capacity of children can be attributed both to their sensitivity to learn about the world and to the potentials of intake the large amount of new information. This latter can be referred to as learning by absorption.
These four core categories are subdivided to several categories that collectively structure the parental theory of the child´s learning.

Keywords:

Learning by very young children, parents, theories, focus group study.