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Children perpetuate competence-based inequality when they help peers
Exchanges of help between children are common and often have positive consequences. But not all help is equally beneficial, for example because some help does not provide an opportunity to practice and develop skills. Here I examine whether young children might perpetuate competence-based inequality...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Nature Publishing Group UK
2023
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10511518/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37730707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41539-023-00192-9 |
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author | Sierksma, Jellie |
author_facet | Sierksma, Jellie |
author_sort | Sierksma, Jellie |
collection | PubMed |
description | Exchanges of help between children are common and often have positive consequences. But not all help is equally beneficial, for example because some help does not provide an opportunity to practice and develop skills. Here I examine whether young children might perpetuate competence-based inequality by providing incompetent peers with less opportunity to practice and improve their skills compared to competent peers. Study 1 (N = 253, 6–9 years) shows that young children understand not all help is equally beneficial: Children think that peers who receive empowerment (hints) vs. non-empowerment (correct answers) help can learn more. Study 2 (N = 80) and 3 (N = 41) then assessed children’s (7–9 years) actual helping behavior in a lab-based experiment. Through a cover story, participants were introduced to two unknown, same-age children whom they later overheard were either good or not good at solving puzzles (Study 2) or math (Study 3). Subsequently, participants got to help both of them with a puzzle-quiz (Study 2) or a math-quiz (Study 3) by providing either empowerment or non-empowerment when they asked for help. Across both studies, children were more likely to provide empowerment help to competent peers, and non-empowerment help to incompetent peers. This work suggests that when young children perceive differences in competence (e.g., based on stereotypes), they contribute to maintaining the status quo by providing the most vulnerable students, that would profit the most from improving their skills, less opportunity to do so. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10511518 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-105115182023-09-22 Children perpetuate competence-based inequality when they help peers Sierksma, Jellie NPJ Sci Learn Article Exchanges of help between children are common and often have positive consequences. But not all help is equally beneficial, for example because some help does not provide an opportunity to practice and develop skills. Here I examine whether young children might perpetuate competence-based inequality by providing incompetent peers with less opportunity to practice and improve their skills compared to competent peers. Study 1 (N = 253, 6–9 years) shows that young children understand not all help is equally beneficial: Children think that peers who receive empowerment (hints) vs. non-empowerment (correct answers) help can learn more. Study 2 (N = 80) and 3 (N = 41) then assessed children’s (7–9 years) actual helping behavior in a lab-based experiment. Through a cover story, participants were introduced to two unknown, same-age children whom they later overheard were either good or not good at solving puzzles (Study 2) or math (Study 3). Subsequently, participants got to help both of them with a puzzle-quiz (Study 2) or a math-quiz (Study 3) by providing either empowerment or non-empowerment when they asked for help. Across both studies, children were more likely to provide empowerment help to competent peers, and non-empowerment help to incompetent peers. This work suggests that when young children perceive differences in competence (e.g., based on stereotypes), they contribute to maintaining the status quo by providing the most vulnerable students, that would profit the most from improving their skills, less opportunity to do so. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-09-20 /pmc/articles/PMC10511518/ /pubmed/37730707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41539-023-00192-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Sierksma, Jellie Children perpetuate competence-based inequality when they help peers |
title | Children perpetuate competence-based inequality when they help peers |
title_full | Children perpetuate competence-based inequality when they help peers |
title_fullStr | Children perpetuate competence-based inequality when they help peers |
title_full_unstemmed | Children perpetuate competence-based inequality when they help peers |
title_short | Children perpetuate competence-based inequality when they help peers |
title_sort | children perpetuate competence-based inequality when they help peers |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10511518/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37730707 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41539-023-00192-9 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT sierksmajellie childrenperpetuatecompetencebasedinequalitywhentheyhelppeers |