ERIC Number: ED221617
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1982-Feb
Pages: 96
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Puerto Rican Children's Informal Education at Home. Final Report.
Jacob, Evelyn
Observations of children's daily activities and interviews with the children's caretakers provided information on preschool children's informal home education in Utuado, Puerto Rico. Three kinds of skills were examined: literacy, chores, and rule-bound games. The unit of analysis was the "Potential Learning Activity" (PLA), a behavior/sequence of behaviors that can result in learning on a specific topic. PLAs were identified as involving observation, imitation, or performance. Literacy PLAs (reading, writing, counting, and preliteracy) were the most frequent skills observed, and games were the least frequent. Activities involved performance more often than observation and imitation. About half of the literacy and the chore PLAs were done alone, while all game PLAs were done with others. Children initiated performance and participation in literacy and game PLAs more than in chore PLAs. The PLA interactions involved the initiation-reply-evaluation sequence of formal education, but unlike formal instructor-initiated education processes, PLA interactions were responses to children's behavior and speech and dealt more with process than with facts. In urban Utuado, children's informal education, like that in unindustrialized countries, emphasizes participatory learning and learner-initiated learning opportunities, but places less emphasis on observation, imitation, and demonstration as learning methods. (Author/MJL)
Descriptors: Child Caregivers, Childrens Games, Comparative Analysis, Developed Nations, Developing Nations, Ethnography, Experiential Learning, Family Environment, Informal Education, Learning Activities, Learning Readiness, Literacy, Nonformal Education, Parent Attitudes, Preschool Education, Puerto Ricans, Skill Development, Socialization, Young Children
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Inst. of Education (ED), Washington, DC.
Authoring Institution: Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC.
Identifiers - Location: Puerto Rico
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A