Romanian Parents' and Kindergarten Teachers' Social Representations of the Development of Intelligence in Children

• Published in: Annals of A.I. I. Cuza University. Psychology Series Vol. 23; no. 1; p. 61
• Main Authors: Arhiri, Laura, Gherman, Mihaela-Alexandra
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Iasi Alexandru Ioan Cuza University Psychology Department 01.01.2014
• Subjects: Children & youth; Intelligence; Studies; Teaching; Theory; Working mothers
• ISSN: 2069-1386

We aimed to explore Romanian parents' and kindergarten teachers' social representations of the development of intelligence in children, how they vary across the three social groups (mothers, fathers and kindergarten teachers) as well as potential connections between parents' social representations of this phenomenon and their choices of kindergarten teachers for their children. The first study was conducted on 120 participants - 40 mothers of kindergarten pupils, 40 fathers and, respectively, 40 kindergarten teachers. The results showed that their social representations of the development of intelligence in children were comprised of four core elements: parental support, school, good results and individual study, and that these representations varied according to the social role of the participants, in line with previous research (e.g. Miguel, Valentim, & Carugati, 2010, 2012, 2013).Our second study was conducted on 241 participants who represented the parents of the kindergarten pupils enrolled in 12 groups and their respective kindergarten teachers. For six of the groups, the parents had the opportunity to choose the group in which their children were enrolled, as the kindergartens had two groups for that educational level, while for the other six, parents did not have the possibility to make this choice due to the fact that there was only one group per level in those respective kindergartens. The results showed that in the condition choice, parents' social representations converged more with the teachers'. The findings of this research are discussed in the light of their contribution to the field of social representations of intelligence.