Mary ­ Kindergarten

Mary’s school is centrally located in Vancouver. The school population is approximately 315 people and grades range from Kindergarten to Grade Seven. The school is situated in a working class part of the city and the students’ cultural backgrounds are diverse, for example East Indian, Tamil, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Ismaili, First Nations, English, and Canadian, thus reflecting the multi-ethnicities of this community. The school receives funding for all day Kindergarten classes, and a lunch program.

The participants in this study consisted of nineteen all day kindergarteners, ten boys and nine girls, and between the ages of five to six years. All of the Kindergarten participants are considered to be English as a Second Language (E.S.L.) students.

The students were acquainted with a definition of a role model and in small and large groups, discussed what a role model is. Pictures and stories of role models were presented by the teacher. The students had access to various readings that portrayed possible role models. Fictional books (such as Clifford and Franklin) and non-fiction books (for example, about doctors and firefighters) were available in the classroom display and library areas. Each student was asked to depict one role model, and to write about his/her role model on a worksheet (Figure 1). During this writing activity I asked the children (to verbally tell me about and describe their role models as I wrote down their responses. In the same small groups, I asked a series of follow-up discussion questions about their role models, and recorded their responses. I adapted some of the wording of the discussion questions because most of the children had difficulties answering them.

For my analysis of the collected data, six participants were randomly chosen: three girls and three boys. I will use pseudonyms for those selected.

The three female participants had varied role models: Sally chose a figure skater, Kathy chose an astronaut, and Priya chose her mother. Fourteen role model characteristics were generated from the responses of the three girls. They were: female, occupation, sports figure, family person, helpful, practice, good player, takes care, education/schooling, think, strong, buys things, athletic, and learning. Twelve of the characteristics had one response, two clusters of two responses (helpful and learning) and one cluster of three responses for the female characteristic.

The three male participants all chose sports figures: John and Chris both chose hockey players, and Dave chose a basketball player. Eight role model characteristics were collated from the boys’ responses. The characteristics were: male, encouragement, shares, team play, good player, practice, athletic, and include sports figures. There were five clusters of three responses for male: team play, sports figure, plays, and athletic; two clusters of two responses for encouragement, and shares; and one response each for good player and practice.