Parent – Child Participation in Planning Children’s Activities Outside of School in European American and Latino Families Mary Gauvain University of California at Riverside Susan M. Perez University of North Florida This longitudinal research used a sociocultural perspective to examine planning competence in the everyday experiences of European American and Latino children from 7 to 9 years of age. Data on children’s participation in planning their activities outside of school, parental expectations about children’s planning competence, and children’s planning in the classroom were collected yearly from Grades 2 to 4 from 140 children and their mothers, and the children’s teachers. Results indicate that decision-making practices and parental expectations change with development and vary by ethnicity. Decision making at home was related to children’s classroom planning; however, the nature of these relations changed over middle childhood. Results are discussed in terms of cultural and parental contributions to the development of planning skills. In recent years developmental psychologists have become interested in how children’s participation in the activities and practices of their community con- tributes to the development of cognitive skill (Goodnow, Miller, & Kessel, 1995). In this approach, called the sociocultural perspective, the developing child and the context in which development occurs are considered interdependent and mutually active. Development is marked by changes in the ways in which children participate in activities as well as in their increasing participation in more complex ac- tivities available in the circumstances of growth. Throughout this process, more experienced people play significant roles in the development and re- finement of cognitive skill (Rogoff, 2003). The present study used a sociocultural approach to investigate the links between social and cultural experiences and the development of a specific cog- nitive skill, planning, in middle childhood. We con- centrated on planning, the deliberate organization of a sequence of actions oriented toward reaching a goal (Rogoff, Gauvain, & Gardner, 1987) because of its importance to mature functioning. For instance, planning competence is implicit in several critical achievements of development such as self-regulation (Kopp, 1997), personal agency (Crockett, 2002), and initiative (Larson, 2000). Research has identified changes over childhood in the ability to plan on laboratory tasks (see Friedman & Scholnick, 1997). However, there has been little systematic study of how planning skills develop and are expressed in children’s everyday experience. In the present study planning was operationalized as decision making regarding children’s activities outside of school. Re- search on goal setting, an important part of the planning process and similar to decision making as conceptualized in the present study, has indicated improvement from the early to late teen years (Klaczynski, Laipple, & Jurden, 1992). The develop- ment of this ability before adolescence has received little research attention. Middle childhood was the focus of this research for several reasons. This age is an important time in the development of planning skills (Friedman & Scholnick, 1997). Parents expect children to act more independently and responsibly, both of which are related to planning. Over middle childhood, children participate in more complex activities than in younger years, have more options as to how to spend their time, and are increasingly involved in activities with people outside the homeFall of which benefit from planning. Research has demonstrated that at this age children are capable of devising and exe- cuting fairly complex plans but they are limited in their understanding of contextual constraints during planning and in their flexibility when an unforeseen problem with a plan occurs (Dreher & Oreter, 1987). Research with this age group has also shown that children’s planning benefits from the assistance of r 2005 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2005/7602-0005 This research was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant R01 HD33998 04. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the children and parents who participated in this research. We also appreciate the contri- butions of many research assistants and students to data collection and coding. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mary Gauvain, Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521. Electronic mail may be sent to mary.gauvain@ucr.edu. Child Development, March/April 2005, Volume 76, Number 2, Pages 371 –383