Re: coercion & affect

vera p john-steiner (vygotsky who-is-at unm.edu)
Sun, 19 May 1996 10:32:27 -0600 (MDT)

Robin,
In "Sociocultural Approaches to Language and Literacy" which I co-edited,
David McNeil and his co-workers have an interesting article in which they
find results somewhat akin to yours. They identify not only class
differences but also differences in mothers' directive behaviors with their
children; they are more directive with girls.
Vera

On Thu, 16 May 1996, Robin Harwood wrote:

> >shed some light here. When teaching their children various
> >tasks, such as drawing a line or stacking blocks, Anglo mothers
> >used more indirect means of guiding their children, such as
> >questions and suggestions, whereas the Puerto Rican mothers
> >used very direct verbal commands. The Puerto Rican mothers
>
> Yes, this is correct--both groups of mothers are interested in
> guiding their children's activities in the teaching tasks, but
> Puerto Rican mothers are more likely to guide using direct
> verbal commands and physical interventions, whereas the Anglo mothers
> are more likely to guide indirectly ("Do you want to put the block
> here?" as opposed to "Put the block here").
>
> Robin
>
>

---------------------------------
Vera P. John-Steiner
Department of Linguistics
Humanities Bldg. 526
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
(505) 277-6353 or 277-4324
Internet: vygotsky who-is-at triton.unm.edu
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