Research On The Difference Between Parental Beliefs And Behaviors Of Preschoolers’ Parents In Remote Minority Areas

This research focuses on parents of preschoolers from three villages in Mojiang Hani nationality County, Yunnan Province. By investigating their parental beliefs and behaviors in early family education, the relationship between the two as well as characteristics of both could be analyzed, so as to find out why the two conflict to each other. The objective of this research is remedying the differences of level between parental beliefs and behaviors to offer some suggestions which could assist rural minority areas to get early family education more appropriate.This research could be divided into three parts:In the first, it carries a survey over parental beliefs and behaviors to analyze where they two can’t match. The survey covers 84 parents of preschoolers from Nangu, Naha and Dengkong three villages in Mojiang County which have no kindergartens, as a part of Early Caring and Developing of Children which advocated by Save the Children. Finding of the investigation shows that there are quite some differences on cognitions of importance of early education and input of family education, acknowledges of children’s development and caring points, perspectives of emotion acceptance and emotional practice, awareness of fathers’role and the actual participation, method and adoption of education.Then, on the base of the investigation, this research summarizes the characteristics of parental beliefs and behaviors and analyzes the reasons of their conflicts. Referring Social Capital Theory of Bourdieu, the reason could be considered from economic capital, social capital and culture capital three aspects, such as the low levels of economic development and family income, poor conditions of basic facility, lack of early education resources, busy farming work, deep influence of national traditions, dominant culture shock, the low degree of parents’ education, narrow-minded raring knowledge. In a word, both material and mental of early family education are in poverty.In the end, learning from the reasons, considering main contents of early family education, this research provides some suggestions special for these areas with the guidance of life education theory, such as popularize the raring and educational knowledge, developing the native resources, more company of parents.