Convergent or divergent? Teacher questions to three-year-old children in day care

Open-ended, divergent questions have been found to be important for children's cognitive and language development. However, there is a paucity of research concerning the types of questions that teachers ask in day care centers that serve primarily children from low-income families. In this study, the types of teachers' questions to 50 three-year-olds 25 boys and 25 girls] from low-income families were analyzed. The total sample of 36-42 month-old children was observed in 10 day care centers. Each child was observed for 80 minutes across five typical day care settings. All of the “true” questions were coded as convergent or divergent, and the children's responses to these questions were analyzed. There were a total of 667 “true” questions asked during approximately 70 hours of observation. For both boys and girls, 88#pc of the questions were convergent and 12#pc divergent. The children were equally compliant to convergent and divergent questions. These day care children were overwhelmingly asked convergent questions p #lt.001] by teachers. Three-year-olds are equally capable of answering divergent and convergent questions. These results indicate that teachers need training in how to ask more divergent questions to young children in order to enhance language and cognitive development.