Epistemic Activities, Schooling and Parenting Styles: A Case Study in French Guiana Rural Contexts

Based on an eco-systemic approach, this article presents the results of an experimental survey among parents and children of four ethnic and cultural French Guiana minorities. Moving from questioning the existence of a correlation between interactive parenting styles and the schooling achievements of young children in French Guiana, we propose two hypotheses: (1) family interactions are visible manifestations of parents’ educational ideologies; a large gap between family and school interactions could influence the child’s school adaptation; (2) parenting interactive styles may vary depending on the nature of the interactions: daily versus learning interactions. Our sample concerned 16 family dyads belonging to four distinct groups: the Teko, Aluku, Laotians and Haitians of French Guiana. Data collection was performed by in-situ observations (to explore the first hypothesis) and video recordings (for the second hypothesis). We used coding and data analysis tools belonging to both conversational pragmatics and the anthropological methodological tradition. The results, based on the interactive styles model proposed by Ailincai & Weil-Barais (2007), suggest that parents’ educational styles are influenced by the socio-cultural ecosystem and that parental behavior, especially when it is related to school success, is profoundly influenced by “globalized” logics, strategies and educational ideologies. The interactional context influences the interactive parental style: as such, the daily interactive styles appear as very mixed between the observed communities, whereas the interactive epistemic styles (related to the learning situations) seem to mobilize the same behavioral categories in all the groups we studied.