Qualities to be developed in Estonian children at home and at school

The study examined the views of 580 mothers, 333 fathers and 43 primary school teachers about qualities to be developed at home and at school in Estonia — a country in transition with reforms towards child-centered democratic education. The study found that mothers, fathers and teachers shared the dominant family socialization values. Mothers, fathers and teachers concordantly stressed the importance of creativity to be developed at school. Teachers, differently from parents, did not consider smartness as a quality to be developed at school. Different socializers — mothers, fathers and teachers — are likely to manifest the pattern of autonomous relatedness (Kagitçibaşi, 1996, 2005) both in family and school socialization. They have a value system where values related to self-direction co-exist with those of social values. In line with this perspective, the study also showed that family socialization was more interdependently oriented whereas socialization at school was independently oriented.