Citation

Stanley WB, Charlesworth R, Looney S, Ringuest J. Early Child Res. Q. 1987; 2(4): 341-357.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1987, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0885-2006(87)90020-2

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A number of questions regarding the nature of social concept development in young children were investigated in this study. In an earlier study, a social concept picture-sorting task was developed to obtain normative data on young children's social concept development. For this replication study, a larger more heterogeneous sample was used consisting of 64 kindergarten and 65 first grade public school students from lower to upper middle-class socioeconomic levels. Profile analysis was used to compare grades, sex, and racial groups. All three variables had a significant impact on performance. Significant differences in difficulty were found among the nine concepts measured. Three of the most difficult concepts (family-not family, those who protect us, and past-present) are commonly included in early childhood curriculum. These results suggest that the level of concept development needs to be considered in planning social studies curriculum and instruction for young children.