Home is for Caring, School is for Learning: Qualitative Data from Child Graduates of INSIGHTS.

Research involving school-aged children presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities. Because of age, developmental maturity level, limited language and conceptual skills and lack of life experiences, young children are not perceived as possessing rich and theory informing data about phenomena that affect them. Viewing children as unreliable and lacking in depth, researchers have often relied primarily on parents as informants and interpreters when examining the experiences of school-aged children. Data collection methods with children, such as individual interviews, art work, observation, or focus groups can also present unique challenges to data analysis and the integrity of the research (Bricher, 1999). On the other hand, it could be argued that the generally unguarded and trusting nature of school-age children along with their unique perceptive abilities makes them a contextually good source of sociological data. Developmentally, the tasks of school-age children ages 6-12 involve mastery of schoolwork, establishment of same gender peer group, beginning competitive play, moving from fantasy to reality thinking, engaging in interactions with authority figures outside of those in the immediate family and developing reasoning and appraisal skills (Morrison & Anders, 1999). A child’s developmental trajectory, behaviors and acquired values and beliefs are in part dependent on the quality of relationships and experiential interactions with those in multiple systems directly or indirectly known to and affecting the child (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). School-age children communicate best via play and simple verbal interactions that do not call for interpretation of nuances or exhaustive exploration of a subject. There are multiple strategies a researcher can use to enhance the child’s level of comfort and support sharing of information. They include conducting interviews in a familiar place, using art as an interaction tool, using board games as a warm up activity, using an informal conversation tone, and providing a snack during the interview (Irwin & Johnson, 2005). Other techniques that are likely to facilitate communication with children include interviewing dyads or small groups of children together instead of one child alone, asking questions that are broadly focused and open ended rather than multiple, detailed, or overly specific questions; and using a tape recorder which allows the child or children to listen to their comments after the interview is completed. While a limited amount of research data exist about the communication processes between children and their parents or significant adults, even less is known about these processes in inner city school-aged minority populations. Multiple studies have explored the relationship between urban neighborhoods, community characteristics (ie. level of violence, condition of buildings, housing availability, substance abuse, school performance, economic profile and employment) and child development and behaviors (Beyers, Bates, Pettit & Dodge, 2003; Roosa, Jones, Tein & Cree, 2003; Sheidow, Gorman-Smith, Tolan & Henry, 2001). When trying to understand behaviors of inner-city minority children, researchers also tend to focus on single parent status, number of children in the household, parenting abilities, social supports and parental employment status (Ceballo & McLoyd, 2002; Klein & Forehand, 2000; McLoyd, 1998; Murry, Bynum, Brody, Willert & Stephens, 2001). Two areas of research that have not received adequate attention are parent-child and teacher-child communication and the cultural context of these communication behaviors. Little information exists about the quality, content and manner in which children talk with adults or factors that dictate how and what parents or teachers communicate to children in general and in situation specific circumstances. Yearwood and McClowry (2006) found that parental communication with inner-city minority children is a complex process primarily driven by safety concerns, child temperament, and parent emotional state (whether the parent is tired, angry, overworked or overextended). Parents reported that their goal was to equip their children with tools that would help them maneuver, what at times, were dangerous community environments. The purpose of this paper is to describe the cultural meaning of communication between children and their parent (s) and teachers from the perspective of inner-city minority children in first and second grade who had completed a temperament-based intervention. Parent-child and teacher-child communication will be referred to as parent-child communication throughout the paper. This qualitative study was a supplement to a larger quantitative prevention trial. Both studies were funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR).