Judges’ delivery of ground rules to child witnesses in Australian courts

Ground rules directions are given to children in forensic interviews to explain what is expected of them, and to reduce their tendency to acquiesce to erroneous or incomprehensible questions. Ground rules may also be necessary when children provide testimony in court. Drawing on research conducted for the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the present study examined the use of ground rules directions delivered in court in 52 trials by 24 presiding judges in three jurisdictions to 57 child complainants (aged 7–17.5 years). Eleven categories of rules were identified. The number of words spoken to deliver each rule was counted, and grade-level readability scores were calculated as a proxy for the complexity of the ground rules. When judges asked comprehension or practice questions, the question types were coded. More than one third of the children (35%) received no ground rules directions from the judge; the remaining 65% received directions on an average of 3.5 types of ground rules out of a maximum of 11 types. While comprehension questions were common, practice questions were rare. Comprehension questions were most often presented in a yes/no format that implied the expected response, although this form of question is unlikely to provide an effective assessment of a child's comprehension. Neither the number of rules delivered nor the number of words used was related to children's age. Implications for children's court testimony are discussed.     

Executive function and verbal self-regulation in childhood: Developmental linkages between partially internalized private speech and cognitive flexibility

Recent studies have noted that executive function and the use of self-regulatory private speech are related in childhood, and proposed that the critical leap that occurs in the development of executive function between the ages of three and six years may be due to the onset of language-based self-regulatory functions at this age. This research explored the relationship between executive function and private speech in a cross-sectional study of 81 children between four and seven years of age. The children performed an executive function task, the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS), and children's use of private speech was observed during a categorization task. The results indicated that, after controlling for children's age, gender, verbal abilities, and fluid reasoning, children's use of partially internalized private speech during the categorization task was significantly related to the number of phases successfully passed on the DCCS task, which required them to switch between card sorting rules. Children who used more partially internalized private speech were more likely to pass the most challenging phase of the DCCS task that assesses the ability to flexibly use different sorting rules according to a higher-order rule. We discuss the role of verbal mediation in the development of cognitive flexibility and its implications for the design of intervention programs for children who possess deficits of executive function.     

Conversational asymmetry and the child's perspective in developmental and educational research

Developmental research and educational practice involve conversations between children and adults. The conversational aspects of these situations have rarely been occasions for reflection. Discrepancies between the child's expectations and the adult's intentions can lead to misunderstanding, for example, at school or during a research interview. Communication can only succeed when the interlocutors agree about the ground rules relevant to the situation. When researchers and educators communicate with children, it is advisable that they understand the children's perspective on the interaction. In this article I argue that analysing adult‐child and child‐child interactions are particularly informative for shedding light on children's perspectives. Methodological aspects of interaction research are discussed. An overview of my research shows that, by clarifying the rules and conventions of the interaction, adults may help children to perform successfully. My interaction studies of pretend play and of students' discussions at school demonstrate that children reflect on the rules of interaction and make efforts to construct the communication tools they need for participating as competent partners in interactions with others.     

We Can Decide What to Play! Children's Perception of Quality in an Icelandic Playschool

The study was conducted with a group of 5 and 6 year old children in one playschool in Reykjavík, Iceland. The purpose of the study was to shed light on what life in an Icelandic playschool is like for the children attending the program, finding out their views on why they attend playschool, what they do and learn in playschool, what the adults do there, what they enjoy and what they don't like, and what they can or cannot decide in playschool. The study used varied research methods, such as group interviews, children's photographs, children's pictures, and a questionnaire using a cardboard game, to discover children's perceptions and opinions. The results of the study revealed that the children had strong opinions about their playschool life and expressed them clearly.     

Unserious but Serious Pilgrimages: What Educational Philosophy Can Learn about Fiction and Reality from Children's Artful Play

What happens if we think of children's play as a form of great art that we turn to and return to for inspiration, for education? If we can see play as art, then what and how can we learn from children's play or from playing with them? What can philosophy, or philosophers, learn from children's play? In this essay Viktor Johansson gives examples of what and when children can teach philosophers through play or, more specifically, how children's play can teach philosophers about the relation between fiction and reality. It begins by exploring the educational relation between fiction and reality in recent revivals of literary humanism. Johansson gives examples from a preschool project of how children use fiction picture books and create new fiction in their play, and how they do so in ways that relate to previous philosophical considerations of literary fiction. To explore this, the essay enters into conversation with the work of Iris Murdoch on the playfulness of art. Through, and in contrast to, Murdoch's work, Johansson establishes that play can be great art through its nonpurposefulness and its use of skill and imagination. Moreover, turning to children's play becomes a method for attending to what Ludwig Wittgenstein calls philosophy's “natural history,” that is, a historicization of philosophical thinking that enables philosophers to learn from children. Johansson concludes by showing that encounters between fiction and play, and with children playing, can be an educational embroilment, not only between teacher and child, but between teacher, child, the visual, the material, and the philosophical in which all learn from one another.     

A Review of Children's,Teachers' and Parents' Influences on Children's Drawing Experience

In this article we argue that research into children's drawings should consider the context in which drawing occurs and that it is crucial to investigate the attitudes and practices of teachers, parents and children themselves that shape children's drawing experience and the drawings which they produce. We review the findings of seven empirical studies reporting data collected through direct observations, interviews and questionnaires from the three main players (teachers, parents and children) on the attitudes and practices shaping children's drawing. Issues covered include teachers' perceptions of the purposes and importance of drawing, support offered by teachers, parents and children for children's drawing endeavours, and possible factors that may lead to an age‐related decline in the amount of drawing children choose to do. We end the review by reporting some preliminary findings from our own large‐scale interview and survey study of 270 5–14 year old children, their parents and teachers, that provides a comprehensive assessment of attitudes and practices influencing children's drawing experience at home and at school. The findings provide further insight into the aforementioned issues, particularly children's, teachers' and parent's explanations of why children's drawing behaviour might decline with age. It is hoped that by reporting these preliminary findings some additional understanding of the context in which children produce their drawings can be gained and new areas for debate opened up.     

Mum and Dad prefer me to speak Bengali at home: code switching and parallel speech in a primary school setting

Although it contains a statutory inclusion statement, England's National Curriculum “hardly acknowledges the learning practices of different minority groups” ( Gregory and Williams, 2003 , p. 103). Through observation and interview, this study examines the repertoire of languages that six children for whom English is an additional language (EAL) choose to use at home and in their primary school settings in the West of England. The study bears out and extends previous research, which indicates that children from various ethnic backgrounds are involved in a struggle where they construct and reconstruct their identities according to the social situations they find themselves in. In addition to code switching between languages, the study reports on children using ‘bilingual parallel speech’, an unresearched practice. It shows that there may be a tension between schools' efforts to build upon the children's use of the home language and the children's reluctance to use it in a school setting, where the dominant institutional language is English, and where they would prefer to appear ‘like everyone else’. Social capital would appear to be an important factor affecting children's use of language and this may make them reluctant to maintain and develop their home language. Schools may need to consider strategies that value bilingual children's commonality with the school culture.     

'I Would Have Worried About Her Being A Nuisance': Workshops for children under three and their parents at Tate Britain

This article reports on a series of eight workshops for children under three and their parents. The workshops took place at Tate Britain, London, and they were collectively known as 'Big and small; short and tall'. The article outlines the approach used to evaluate the workshops, particularly the way in which parents' experiences, and their views on children's experiences, were given prominence. Despite the potential difficulties of taking very young children into an art gallery, most parents said they were pleased with their children's engagement. Parent feedback suggests that the structure and content of the workshops did much to enable them and their children to learn about art and artists together. Moreover, some confirmed that their joint involvement had stimulated further learning at home and life-wide learning more generally.     

African American Children's Affective Attributions and Consequences Regarding Sociomoral Events

Research Findings: This study examined 56 young (prekindergarten through 2nd grade) urban-dwelling African American children's understanding of the affective attributions and consequences of 3 types of sociomoral rule systems: prosocial, active, and inhibitive morality. It also tested the relationship of affective attributions and consequences to children's behavior. As expected, children's affective responses differed by sociomoral rule system and character role type, supporting the notion of a “happy victimizer” and a subtle attributional shift. Children provided affective attributions that attempted to resolve the dilemmas presented in the different sociomoral vignettes regardless of the affect associated with the vignette. The relationship of children's affective attributions and consequences to their behavior in school was partially supported. Children's affective attributions were significantly associated with their prosocial behavior. However, contrary to predictions, no other significant associations emerged between children's affective attributions and negative behavior or between children's affective consequences and behavior. Practice or Policy: Those working with young African American children should consider the reasoning behind children's emotional and behavioral reactions and not just focus on the correct or appropriate response to understand and promote children's positive development. There are implications for supporting African American children's competence development at school through a behavior promotion approach.     

Children's agency during transition to formal schooling

Children's transition to school is a key issue in early years of education. Research in this field points to the counterintuitive possibility that the transition to school may actually lead to a reduction rather than a facilitation of children's agency. The paper presents findings of a longitudinal comparative ethnography on children's transition from fields of early childhood education to primary school in England and Germany. Building on theoretical concepts of the sociology of childhood, the study uses the concept of children's complicity to explore how children's agency is embedded in institutional, interactional orders and how it changes during transition. The findings indicate the importance of the structure of keeping the group of children together during transition. Not only is children's participation in the new social situation in school mediated by peer cultural routines. The paper presents the argument that the complicity children develop with their teachers' expectations takes different forms when they can rely on peer cultural routines.     

Test Anxiety in Elementary and Secondary School Students

In this article., we review the literature on the development of test anxiety in elementary and secondary school children. Recent theoretical conceptualizations of anxiety are presented. Anxiety is posited to be a multidimensional construct that has roots in how parents react to children's early achievement strivings. Its ontogeny is tied to children's developing capacity to interpret their school performance relative to their previous performance, to the performance of other children, as well as to the increasingly strict evaluative practices children encounter as they move through school. Intervention strategies for alleviating anxious children's poor performance in evaluative situations are discussed. Important issues for future anxiety research are presented, including the need for new measures of children's anxiety and for a more thorough assessment of both individual differences in how students experience anxiety and the developmental course 0f the components of anxiety.     

Aggressive Fighting in British Middle School Children

In study 1, the time when aggressive fighting involving 8 and 11 year‐old children took place was examined by means of direct playground observations during lunch‐time recess. There was a tendency, significant in the younger group, for there to have been more fights in the last quarter of recess. In study 2, the causes of fights, the sex of the participants, the proportion of fights that were escalated by other children joining in in a non‐conciliatory way, and the proportion in which children intervened to stop the fights were investigated, again by means of direct playground observations. The most common causes of fights were disputes over some aspect of a rule‐governed game, teasing, retaliations to accidental hurt/injury, and to a lesser extent disputes over space. Most of the fights that were observed involved boys only (90.5%), and only a minority involved boys and girls (7.9%) or just girls (1.6%). Most fights (82.5%) were not escalated by other children and most fights (92.1 %) did not involve attempts to stop them by other children. In study 3, interview data concerning children's views on fighting are reported. Many children expressed generally negative attitudes towards fighting, and there appeared to be several common ‘barriers’ that deterred children from participating. On the other hand, some children also articulated reasons why they sometimes felt it was necessary to fight. The significance of the results from the three studies for managing children's aggressive behaviour in schools is discussed.     

Differential recognition of children's cultural practices in middle primary literacy classrooms

This paper argues that teachers' recognition of children's cultural practices is an important positive step in helping socio‐economically disadvantaged children engage with school literacies. Based on 21 longitudinal case studies of children's literacy development over a 3‐year period, the authors demonstrate that when children's knowledges and practices assembled in home and community spheres are treated as valuable material for school learning, children are more likely to invest in the work of acquiring school literacies. However, they also show that while some children benefit greatly from being allowed to draw on their knowledge of popular culture, sports and the outdoors, other children's interests may be ignored or excluded. Some differences in teachers' valuing of home and community cultures appeared to relate to gender dimensions.     

Patterns of Understanding

In this phenomenological study, seven veteran elementary schoolteachers explored how they were able to make accurate and timely decisions about their students' mathematical understanding. These teachers provided rich mathematical environments for their students and made accurate diagnostic judgments about the development of students' knowledge in these environments. Nevertheless, at first it was difficult for them to describe the kinds of evidence they used in assessing their children's thinking. They engaged in a recursive process of watching, individually reacting to, and discussing videotaped sessions of math activities in their classrooms and sharing stories about their observations of children. Through this process, patterns of recognizable phenomena emerged that the teachers had implicitly perceived and interpreted as indicators of children's understanding. These patterns included changes in children's demeanor, extending a concept into new discoveries, making spontaneous modifications rather than simple imitations, using a process in new contexts, feeling confident in using shortcuts, being able to explain ideas to others, and showing high engagement and focus during activities.     

On the Relations Between Parents' Ideals and Children's Autonomy

In this article Doret J. de Ruyter and Anders Schinkel argue that parents' ideals can enhance children's autonomy, but that they may also have a detrimental effect on the development of children's autonomy. After describing the concept of ideals and elucidating a systems theoretical conception of autonomy, de Ruyter and Schinkel explore the ways in which the ideals of parents may play a role in the development of their children's autonomy. They show that abstract and complex ideals of parents (be it ideals for their children, ideals with regard to their parenthood, or their personal ideals) are most likely to enhance their children's autonomy. They also explain that an authoritative parenting style is most conducive to autonomy, although whether or not it does benefit children's autonomy also depends on the types of ideals pursued by parents.     

Parental involvement,children's aspirations,and achievement in new immigrant families

The authors investigated the relationships among multiple aspects of parental involvement (English proficiency, school involvement, control and monitoring of children), children's aspirations, and achievement in new immigrant families in the United States. They used data on immigrant parents and school-age children (N = 1,255) from the New Immigrant Survey to examine immigrant families from diverse backgrounds. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that parental English proficiency and involvement in school education are related to children's academic achievement, cognitive development, and English language ability, directly as well as indirectly, through children's educational aspirations. Parental control and monitoring is not beneficial to immigrant children's cognitive development, although variations were found across different groups. They also observed intriguing findings regarding gender and racial or ethnic diversity. Based on their findings, they provide recommendations for the fostering of academic success and the design and implementation of educational programs and practices for immigrant children.     

Young black children and science: Chronotopes of narratives around their science journals

We explored 30 Black Kindergarten‐2nd grade students' spoken narratives around pages of their science journals that the children selected as best for showing them as scientists. Because in all narratives, space–time relationships play an important role not only in situating but also in constituting them, we focused on such relationships using Bakhtin's (1981) construct of chronotopes. Our chronotopical analysis aimed at fleshing out the temporal and spatial features that were present in the children's journal pages, and in the children's ways of talking both about these features and about being scientists. Our goal was to better understand ways in which African‐American children identify with science and scientists in particular contexts: an interview with an adult who had visited their class throughout that year and a class where they were offered various opportunities to engage with science. Using six cases that maximized the variety of understandings we could develop vis‐à‐vis our research question, we show how the children's narratives were filled with differing space–time relationships in which the children found ways to showcase their agency. Thus, we provide insights into how the children authored relationships with science and scientists, negotiated the past with the present and possible future, and contextualized their narratives within various time‐spaces that had meaning for them. Moreover, multiple people populated the children's chronotopes and became intertwined with the space–time relationships that underlined their conceptions of themselves vis‐à‐vis science and scientists. Despite the varied conceptions of science and scientists that the children portrayed, their narratives communicated a high level of confidence in being able to do science and be scientists, and initiative in learning. The children's narratives were filled with hope, “able‐ness,” knowledge, affect, and possibility. These findings point to several considerations for practice. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 568–596, 2012     

Doctor/Nurse,Teacher/Caretaker: Children's Gendered Choice of Adult Occupation in Interviews and Role Plays

Abstract

A social constructionist analysis is used here to examine London primary school children's job choices in interview discussions and role play groups. Children's selections are compared according to gender, and according to the different interactive environments in which they made them. By analysing their responses this paper investigates which gendered constructions appeared to prevail, and the ways in which children explain their ideas. Previous studies of children's occupational choices have found their responses to be gender‐stereotypical. This paper shows that in their interviews the children in this study chose a diverse selection of jobs, which were less gender‐stereotypical than found in previous studies. However, a clear dichotomy remained between the attributes of the jobs chosen by the different genders, and few children chose jobs traditionally performed by the opposite sex. Moreover, in their role play groups children's constructions of gender and adult occupation often appeared different, and sometimes more gender‐stereotypical, than those in the interviews.     

Children's Intrinsic Motivation to Provide Help Themselves After Accidentally Harming Others

Little is known about the flexibility of children's prosocial motivation. Here, 2‐ and 3‐year‐old children's (n = 128) internal arousal, as measured via changes in pupil dilation, was increased after they accidentally harmed a victim but were unable to repair the harm. If they were able to repair (or if they themselves did not cause the harm and the help was provided by someone else) their arousal subsided. This suggests that children are especially motivated to help those whom they have harmed, perhaps out of a sense of guilt and a desire to reconcile with them. Young children care not only about the well‐being of others but also about the relationship they have with those who depend on their help.     

‘Settling in’

Abstract

This study examined the ‘settling in’ behaviour of newly enrolled children who entered an established preschool classroom. Settling in can cause emotional distress and behavioural problems in children. Thus, it is important to document the ways in which young children successfully adjust. The behaviours of the ‘new’ children were tracked across the school year and compared with ‘old children’, or those previously enrolled. Results indicated that new children did not differ from old children in terms of unengaged behaviour. While all children's socially interactive behaviour and social fantasy increased across the school year, the new children engaged in lower levels of these behaviours. Further, the signals they used to initiate social interaction were less sophisticated than those used by established children. Results are discussed in terms of the role of familiarity in supporting children's exhibition of competence. Implications for practice and policy are discussed.