Towards Better Cultural Enlightenment: Identify Chinese Preschoolers’ Cultural Cognition Traits and Predictors

Research Findings: The current study explored the average levels, latent profiles, and predictors of preschoolers’ cultural cognition, in a sample of 8774 preschoolers’ parents in Shanghai, China. Parents with children aged 3–6 years completed measures of Cultural Cognition Scale for Preschoolers (CCSP) which was newly developed and validated. First, the psychometric properties indicated that CCSP was a reliable and valid scale with four constructs: cultural knowledge, cultural interest, cultural identity, and cultural practice. Second, preschoolers negatively performed in cultural cognition with few high-quality cultural practices and limited fundamental cultural knowledge. Third, the latent profile analysis yielded low-(28.0%), middle-(53.8%), and high-level(18.2%) profiles of parent reports, differentiated by parental education, child age, child gender, preschool rating, and location. Last but not least, a hierarchical regression analysis predicting preschoolers’ cultural cognition found that child age, child gender, and parental education had critical effects. In addition, interaction effects were found between parental education and child age on cultural knowledge, as well as between child age and gender on cultural practice. Practice or Policy: This study provides a useful tool to understand and evaluate preschoolers’ cultural cognition ability. The findings imply that excellent national cultural enlightenment education with more high-quality cultural activities for preschoolers needs additional focus. Besides, the characteristics of the children with the identified profiles and the family factors related to cultural cognition serve as a reference to better advance children's humanistic literacy.