Investigating preschoolers' and mothers' self-reported knowledge of organic waste recycling and the role of mothers' conversational style on children's memory reports

Date

2023-10-3

Author

Cengizoğlu, Seçil

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The aim of this study is twofold. First, it attempts to reveal how organic waste recycling was conceptualized as a sustainable practice by preschool children and their mothers, before and after their joint participation in learning activities about composting. Second, the potential of the mothers’ conversational style to enhance children’s self-reported knowledge as well as memory reports of organic waste recycling was investigated. Twenty-three mothers and their 60–72-month-old children jointly participated in a five-day implementation of a series of learning activities (storytelling, science, play, math, music, etc.). Since this study was a descriptive qualitative study, one-to-one semi-structured interviews with children and mothers and mother-child joint conversations at the end of each implementation day were used as data collection tools. The findings showed that the children’s knowledge of what organic waste is, how organic waste can be recycled, and why this is necessary was increased. The children indicated that recycling organic waste is an effective waste management strategy that they can easily do themselves in their daily lives. Participating mothers see composting as an appropriate way to explore the cyclical process of recycling with their children. Moreover, they consider composting as a feasible and convenient method that can be easily transformed into a collaborative activity where different stakeholders can come together for responsible consumption and production. Further analysis of the mother-child joint conversations revealed that there were multiple positive relationships between mothers’ conversational variables and children’s contributions to the joint conversations. Mothers who had more elaborations in joint conversations about composting learning activities encouraged their children by asking more open-ended questions, yes/no questions and providing more context statements. In addition, mothers’ elaborations were closely related to the amount of detail children reported about learning activities in post and follow-up interviews.

Subject Keywords

Early childhood education for sustainability, Mothers’ conversational style, Preschool children, Organic waste recycling

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/105449

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis