The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.
The big idea
Poor preschoolers get fewer chances than wealthier children to bring their prized personal possessions to school. That’s what I found in my two-year comparative ethnographic study of two preschools in Madison, Wisconsin. One of the preschools primarily serves middle-class white children and the other primarily serves poor children of color.
In the preschool that served mostly poor kids, the teachers made a rule that kids could not bring toys, games, stuffed animals or other personal items to school. The stakes felt too high to these teachers. Some students’ families were recently evicted and had few toys. Other students’ families did buy them toys but at great financial cost, and families didn’t want these items broken. Teachers also worried about toys being stolen. The items that I observed children try to bring in ranged from expensive action figures to random board game pieces to sparkly ponytail holders.
I then observed an affluent school and found that teachers actually encouraged children to bring their personal items to school. The teachers hosted a weekly show and tell. Kids could bring toys, objects from nature or anything else to show and tell. Teachers also encouraged kids to bring books to read with their peers and stuffed animals to cuddle at nap time any day of the week. Because these teachers knew their students’ families were financially well-off, they made classroom rules that allowed children to celebrate their personal property.
Why it matters
This gulf in how kids experience classroom rules about property matters for three reasons…