How Much Difference Is There Among The Various Cultures In Terms of Child Rearing?
by Ruth Thomas, Ph.D. The newly developed reflective dialogue approach to parent education seeks learning beyond information and skill acquisition and aims at understanding perspectives of parents as origins of parental actions and as a basis for self-directed conceptual change. Conceptual change refers to change in conceptual organization as reflected in parental perspectives. Parental perspectives are systems of beliefs, assumptions, meanings, and orientations held by parents regarding their parenting role, their children, and their parent-child relationship. A reflective dialogue educational approach was developed and tested over eight-to-ten weeks in five parent education programs involving mothers and fathers, adolescent parents, parents in suburban communities, and parents referred to educational programs by medical and social service agencies. Videotaped parent-child interaction cases were used to stimulate parents’ thinking about implications of various parenting practices and
