Learning about technology: Family vs. peer pairings

Recently a number of institutions have begun sponsoring nondeficit science and/or technology learning experiences for parents and their middle school‐aged children which are intended to be enriching rather than remedial or compensatory in purpose. Very little research documenting the effects of parental involvement in the education of older children has been reported, however. The intent of this article was to present two studies designed to determine whether middle school‐aged children's attitudes and content achievement are different when they take a technology course with their parents (parent‐child treatment) or with their peers (child‐child treatment). The first study focused on learning about communications technology (primarily telegraphs, telephones and radios); the second study focused on microcomputers. Results indicate that parents have little affect in helping their children learn the subject matter of technology courses. Likewise, parents do not affect children's attitudes toward computers. Both results were attenuated by the fact that the students in the studies were high achievers who were interested in and motivated to learn the subject matter, regardless of treatment. Significant differences were noted for computer literacy favoring the parent‐child group, however. Parents also seemed to effect children's attitudes toward the subject matter of the courses. Further research needs to be done with less appealing course content or with less motivated students to fully determine the effect of parent‐child and child groupings in science and technology courses.