Abstract
Zusammenfassung. Was wissen Vorschulkinder über das eigene Land und fremde Länder? Womit hängt ihre Denkkompetenz in diesem Bereich zusammen? Wissen die in Deutschland lebenden Kinder gemischter kultureller Herkunft mehr über interkulturelle Zusammenhänge als ihre deutschen Altersgenossen? In der vorliegenden Untersuchung wurde ein durch Bildergeschichten anschaulich untermaltes Interview mit Kindern durchgeführt. Es wurden aus einer älteren Arbeit von Piaget abgeleitete Fragen zum Begriff des Landes und zu verschiedenen Merkmalen kultureller Zugehörigkeit gestellt. Die Antworten wurden einer Hauptkomponentenanalyse unterzogen: Vier Komponenten der kognitiven Repräsentation interkultureller Zusammenhänge bei Kindern, die Landbegriff, Wahrnehmung sichtbarer Unterschiede, Standortkenntnisse und Verständnis inklusiver Relationen umfaßten, erklärten fast zwei Drittel der Varianz in der Stichprobe. Die Wahrnehmung- und die Inklusion-Komponente korrelierten mit Ergebnissen eines “inhaltsfreien” Tests operationalen Denkens. “Bikulturelle” Kinder konnten die Interviewfragen nicht besser als ihre deutschen Altersgenossen beantworten.
Abstract. What do preschool children know about their own and foreign countries? What is the children's thinking in this domain related to? Do children of mixed cultural origin living in Germany know more about intercultural relations than their German peers? In the present study an interview making use of pictures was presented to preschoolers. Questions regarding the concept of country and different features of a cultural membership were posed. The answers were factor analysed. Four components of the cognitive representation of intercultural relations in children were extracted, including concept of the country, perception of visible differences, knowledge about the living place, and comprehension of the inclusive relations. The factors explained about two thirds of the sample's variance. The perception and the inclusion components were correlated with the achievement in a “content-free” test of operational thinking. The “bicultural” children did not answer the questions on their own and foreign countries better than their German peers.
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