The role of teaching practices in the development of children’s interest in reading and mathematics in kindergarten

This study examined the extent to which teaching practices observed in kindergarten classrooms predict children’s interest in reading and mathematics. The pre-skills in reading and mathematics of 515 children were measured at the beginning of their kindergarten year, and their interest in reading and mathematics were assessed in the following spring. A pair of trained observers used the Early Childhood Classroom Observation Measure (ECCOM; Stipek & Byler, 2004) to observe the teaching practices used by 49 kindergarten teachers. The results revealed that in classrooms in which the teachers placed greater emphasis on child-centered teaching practices than on teacher-directed practices, the children showed more interest in reading and mathematics.     

Validating the early childhood classroom observation measure in first and third grade classrooms

The present study reports on the psychometric properties of the Early Childhood Classroom Observation Measure (ECCOM) in Finnish and Estonian first and third grade classrooms. The observation data were collected from 91 first grade teachers and 70 third grade teachers. Teachers' curriculum goals, teaching experience and the classroom size were measured also. The results of confirmatory factor analysis provided evidence of the three-factor model (management, climate, and instruction) for each dimension—child-centred, teacher-directed, and child-dominated—in both grades. The reliability of the dimensions and sub-scales was good, and some evidence was also found for criterion validity. The findings imply that ECCOM is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring teaching practices in primary school.     

Transitive dictionary translation challenges direct dictionary translation in CLIR

The paper reports on experiments carried out in transitive translation, a branch of cross-language information retrieval (CLIR). By transitive translation we mean translation of search queries into the language of the document collection through an intermediate (or pivot) language. In our experiments, queries constructed from CLEF 2000 and 2001 Swedish, Finnish and German topics were translated into English through Finnish and Swedish by an automated translation process using morphological analyzers, stopword lists, electronic dictionaries, n-gramming of untranslatable words, and structured and unstructured queries. The results of the transitive runs were compared to the results of the bilingual runs, i.e. runs translating the same queries directly into English. The transitive runs using structured target queries performed well. The differences ranged from −6.6% to +2.9% units (or −25.5% to +7.8%) between the approaches. Thus transitive translation challenges direct translation and considerably simplifies global CLIR efforts.     

Family- and classroom-related factors and mother–kindergarten teacher trust in Estonia and Finland

This study examined the role of family-related (mother’s education, depressive symptoms and child’s gender) and kindergarten-related (teacher’s experience, teaching practices and class size) factors in mothers’ and teachers’ mutual trust in Estonia and Finland. Six hundred eighteen (206 Estonian and 412 Finnish) mothers of kindergarten children and their teachers (26 Estonian, 49 Finnish) were participated in the study. Both mothers and teachers filled in the questionnaire on trust; teachers’ teaching practices were observed with early childhood classroom observation measure. The results of multilevel modelling showed that mothers in both countries trusted more in teachers who used child-centred rather than teacher-directed practices. Teachers indicated higher trust in highly educated mothers and mothers of girls. Estonian teachers with longer work experience trusted more in mothers than less experienced teachers, and Finnish teachers trusted less in mothers reporting more depressive symptoms. The results emphasise the importance of both family-related and kindergarten-related factors in the enhancement of mutual trust.