A Study on the Relationship between Mother's Child-rearing Practices and Children's Critical Thinking Abilities

어머니의 육아방식과 아동의 비판적 사고력과의 관계에 관한 연구

This study attempts to clarify the relationship between mother;s child-rearing practices and children's critical thinking abilities. More specifically this study wants to answer the questions: (a) Is there any relationship between mother's child-rearing practices and children's critical thinking abilities? (b) What dimensions of child-rearing practices are more important for children's critical thinking abilities? (c) Does the developmental process of children's critical thinking abilities show any difference according to the mother's child-rearing practices? This study is based on the conceptual model of child-rearing practices from the cognitive disciplinary viewpoint proposed by Lee et al.(1973). They polarized the child-rearing practices into the“mediated”types. These types were specified along seven dimensions of child-rearing. In general terms, the two types refer to the degree to which mother resorts to the description of concrete and immediate phenomena and immediate expression of momentary impulses, and positively reinforces such behaviors of her children. Two kinds of data were collected from 60 primary school boys and girls, and their mothers. A child-rearing practices questionnaire with 28 items was sent to the mothers. And the children were administered a critical thinking abilities test containing measures of 4 dimensions from the Ahn's Critical Thinking Measurement Technique. The major findings are those (a) the children of mothers who reported to have used more“mediated”types of child-rearing show relatively higher level of critical thinking abilities than their counterparts; (b) of the seven dimensions of child-rearing practices, the most significant are“mode of description”,“rationality-orientation”and“reward and punishment”; and (c) the“mediated”type of child-rearing practices tends to facilitate critical thinking abilities development. In conclusion, it is believed that a further refinement of this study will contribute to the development of child-rearing training program for mothers.