A Classroom Investigation of the Growth of Metacognitive Awareness in Kindergarten Children Through the Writing Process

This study investigated the presence and growth of kindergarten children's metacognition as they engaged in the writing process. The study was conducted in an environment that surrounded children with books, language, and print. Twice a month the teacher/researcher interviewed the children as they finished writing, asking questions designed to help them reflect on their thinking and strategies they used in their writing. Anecdotal records, observations, and individual writing folders were used to complete a checklist of writing strategies for each child. Interviews with the children confirmed that they were exhibiting and showing growth in their metacognition. They were able to provide appropriate answers to questions that required them to talk about their thinking and identify strategies that helped them in their writing. The study provides a model that could be used in classrooms to help children in the development of their growing metacognition and writing in an authentic learning environment.     

Factors affecting placement decisions of children following short-term emergency care

Case files of 424 residents at an emergency treatment center for abused and neglected children were used to generate a beginning set of variables which, in combination, predicted whether or not children from the center would be discharged to their natural family environment. Variables with descending order of predictive significance were place from which the child was admitted, the length of time spent in treatment, the age and the race of the child, Other variables--the number of siblings, the child's sex and the presence of physical/sexual abuse--did not approach significance.     

学习障碍儿童的家庭环境探析

家庭是儿童接触最早的环境,也是接触最多的环境,父母是孩子人生的第一位老师,因此家庭环境对每个儿童的影响是根深蒂固的。许多研究都发现家庭环境对学习障碍儿童有影响,文章从家庭物质环境和家庭精神环境来论述其对学习障碍儿童的影响及建议。     

基于ARCS动机模式的幼儿教师在职培训策略探讨

幼儿教师在职培训是促进幼儿教师专业发展的重要途径。美国的心理学教授John M Keller提出了ARCS(Attention,Relevence,Confidence,Satisfaction)学习动机模式,该模式认为学习动机由注意、相关、自信和满意四部分组成。基于此模式及幼儿教师学习动机的多样性、自主性、问题性特点,本文尝试提出探索教师需求、营造良好培训环境、完善培训激励机制的培训策略,以提高在职培训效果。     

To know,to decide,to act: the young child’s right to participate in action for the environment

This article draws on a research study that focused on young children’s involvement in an environmental curriculum that created for them opportunities to display their competence and confidence through knowing, deciding and acting for the environment within a supportive early childhood setting. When young children are involved in making decisions that affect their lives, including those decisions regarding sustainability and the natural environment, they are capable in contributing to the decision-making that leads them to purposeful action. The research revealed the importance of honouring the young child’s right to know about social and environmental issues; to be part of conversations and possible solutions; to have their ideas and contributions valued; to seek solutions with others in order to be able to take meaningful action. The article explores the notion that when the rights of young children are respected, they are confident advocates for the environment and for a more sustainable world.     

论“孩奴”现象对幼儿生命成长的不良影响

"孩奴"对父母是一个辛苦而无奈的称谓,身为父母者劳其一生、倾其所有,为的是让孩子能有一个光明的未来。当父母沦为"孩奴",孩子就会承受巨大的压力,不利于他们的发展,这样的孩子走上社会反而缺乏竞争力。"孩奴"不仅是一个社会问题,更是一个教育问题,为了使更多的父母摆脱子女的"奴役",政府及相关教养机构要转变观念,给幼儿一个自由、健康的成长环境;为了使孩子健康快乐地成长,父母不妨从自身做起,做个优秀的"农夫",在关键的时刻给孩子指引,给孩子创建一个自由宽松的成长环境。     

How a young child learns how to take part in mealtimes in a Japanese day-care center: a longitudinal case study

This research is a longitudinal, ethnographic study that focuses on mealtimes with one boy from 9 to 78 months of age in a day-care center in Japan. It looks at routine interactions between a child, his nursery teachers, and the environment, which is a shared and mutually available communicative space between participants in collaboration. The aim of this study is to clarify how the meal as a learning problem is “solved,” especially with young children whom the teacher cannot instruct verbally, and how the environment in which this takes place affects the process and is used in collaboration. The first part, a diachronic illustration of the child’s environment, in which all materials are organized as a total system to constrain his action, demonstrates the dynamic relation between his actions, the nursery teachers’ actions, and the environment. The second part presents the findings of a microanalysis of the interaction between a nursery teacher and the boy at 15 months, which is a critical transitional time from other-assisted to self-organized eating. It shows the close interdependence between the child’s environment and the teacher’s way of caring for him. The teachers generally used environmental modifications to assist his eating and to channel his actions toward their preferences. This study has demonstrated that children can learn much through an intentional arrangement of an artificial environment.     

Preschool children’s conceptions of water,molecule, and chemistry before and after participating in a playfully dramatized early childhood education activity

The present study reports an empirical investigation into concept formation of young children. Based on interviews conducted before and after participating in a playfully enacted chemistry lesson at a culture center, it is analyzed how 6-year-old children conceptualize water, molecule, and chemistry. Theoretically, the study is informed by Vygotsky’s cultural-historical perspective on concept formation. The empirical data consist of pre- and post-interviews with children and documentation of their participation in the intermediate activity. This documentation is used in the post-interviews as a mutual ground for talking with the children about what they remember and how they understand the activity they participated in and what the activity intended to illustrate. The results are presented in terms of three inductively generated categories: ‘everyday’, ‘experientially-based’, and ‘generalized experiences’ concepts, respectively. The implications of these findings for early childhood chemistry (science) education are discussed.

     

Language development: A complex,systematic, and natural process

Conclusions Although we do not understand very well what the processes are that contribute to language development, it is clear that communication plays a central role. As children strive to become increasingly skilled at communicating their ideas (White, 1959), as they have increasingly complex ideas to communicate (Piaget, 1955), and as they encounter an increasingly diverse set of people with whom to communicate (Brown, 1973), they must learn to use language which is richer and more flexible.When children come to school or to a day care center they already know a great deal about language. They have readily and actively mastered words, sentences and forms of communication which they need in their own family and community. In their new environment—the school or center—children's language development can further be fostered by adults who are receptive to children's efforts at communication. Adults who encourage children to use language in new ways, who attend to what children mean to say and who recognize that children's errors are often not mistakes, are likely to play a positive role in children's language development.Janet H. Kane and Karen Sheingold are on the Staff at Bank Street College of Education.     

Promoting Positive Social Development in Family Childcare Settings

The quality of experiences in childcare has significant, lasting impact on children&s social development. With the growing number of young children being served in family childcare settings, it is imperative that the care provides a quality environment that nurtures children&s social development. Empirically supported interventions that specifically target family childcare, however, are lacking. The development and evaluation of a video-based program aimed at training family childcare providers in setting up their childcare environment to promote social development in young children is described. Forty-two family childcare providers were randomly assigned to an intervention group and a wait-list control group. A majority of the participants felt they learned some to very much new, practical information and said they found the interactive discussions particularly helpful. This study illustrates the feasibility of doing training and evaluation research in family childcare settings.     

Teasing apart the child care conundrum: A factorial survey analysis of perceptions of child care quality, fair market price and willingness to pay by low-income, African American parents

Child care quality plays a crucial role in children's social and cognitive development. While child care quality is a critical issue for all children, it matters more for low-income children. Policy makers have increased the emphasis on allowing parents, not government, to make decisions about the type of care they want for their children. Yet most research on child care quality has focused on how child care professionals, not parents define high quality care. This study investigates how low-income families evaluate child care quality by examining the child care preferences of a sample of low-income African American parents. We employ the factorial survey method, a method used in sociological research to assess people's perceptions and rankings of individual attributes associated with complex multidimensional phenomena. The factorial survey method permits a simultaneous assessment of how respondents evaluate and make tradeoffs among multiple child care characteristics. We assess the impact of child care characteristics on respondents’ perceptions of child care desirability, fair market value, and willingness to pay. Findings indicate that parents’ definition of quality focused squarely on the care giving environment, specifically the qualifications, experience, training and behavior associated with the child care provider. The type of care facility—family, center, relative or neighbor care was largely irrelevant to this sample of parents. Parents believed that the characteristics they defined as desirable child care situations were worth more, and parents were willing to pay more for these characteristics. These parents also defined quality in terms of race and class, and they wanted racial and economic diversity. This research suggests parents may choose lower quality care, not because they do not know what quality is or because they define quality care differently, but because such care may be neither available nor affordable in their communities.     

Greek primary school children’s representations of the urban environment as seen through their drawings

In the present study, we explore aspects of Greek primary school children’s representations about the urban environment through the use of drawings and their relation to sustainability. For that purpose, 104 children, aged 9–12 (4th and 6th grades), were asked to make two drawings of their town: one as it is now and another as they would like it to be. Drawings were analysed using pre-defined categories of urban sustainability and were statistically analysed using SPSS. Results revealed a serious gap in knowledge regarding energy and aspects of local development tied to sustainability in the current and future state of the children’s towns. Although the most popular characteristics in the children’s drawings were associated with the environment, the majority of children illustrated issues related to society. Evidence indicated an age-related progression of representations related to sustainability in the urban environment, at least concerning the topics of natural environment, infrastructure and the realization of problems caused by air pollution and municipal waste generation.     

家长的教育理念是影响孩子心理健康的重要因素——教育孩子要在“根”上下工夫

许多家长非常重视孩子教育,为了孩子能出人头地而不惜重金让孩子上各种各样的补习班、特长班,搞得孩子精疲力尽。过度学习导致有的学生越来越厌恶学习,有的学生学习成绩虽有提高但出现了郁闷、紧张、焦虑等心理问题,学生的身心健康已经受到危害。在学生的发展方面,与提高学习成绩相比,培养学生健全的人格更为关键。     

Bodies displayed on walls: are children’s bodies represented in an inclusive way in the pictures on the walls in their early childhood educational environments?

The messages conveyed by visual representations in the early childhood education (ECE) environment are critical to ensuring the success of inclusive practices. Given that anti-bias education permeates and affects everything which takes place in ECE institutions, the challenge for early childhood educators is to think creatively about how classroom walls can be used effectively as part of an educational environment rather than for purely decorative purposes. Our research aimed to examine, through a content analysis of the illustrations, the representation of the body taking into account the different categories as they are portrayed on nine different ECE classroom walls in Spanish public schools. Results show that the ECE walls are teaching gender equality to young children, with no single predominant role for girls or boys, but that they are not contributing to children learning about corporal diversity related to disability and ageing.     

Growing up in a tourist destination: developing an environmental sensitivity

Abstract

This paper explores how the socio-cultural milieu of a community may foster a sense of environmental stewardship among children and young people. Ethnographic fieldwork, carried out in a popular tourist destination in Australia, revealed that the overt impacts of tourism activity such as littering provoke negative feelings among children and young people; these perceptions can in turn translate into a sensitivity towards the environment. While debated in some circles, a Significant Life Experiences (SLE) lens is useful in understanding children and young people’s lived experiences of – and sensitivity to - environmental issues in the communities where they are raised. SLE is employed in this article to explore how a sense of stewardship towards the environment is developed among children and young people growing up in a tourist destination. Findings suggest they actively contribute to protecting the environment in a variety of ways from regular beach clean ups and educating visiting tourists to participating in rallies and anti-development protests.     

Language and Identity Construction of China’s Rural-Urban Migrant Children: An Ethnographic Study in an Urban Public School

This article investigates the identity construction process of China’s rural-urban migrant children through analyses of their discourses and of their use of language. Rural children have relocated to the urban centers with their parents on a massive scale over the past decades as China has undergone rapid economic changes. Many migrant children are able to attend urban public schools, and their identity construction emerges as an important issue that attracts increasing public and scholarly attention. This study draws on ethnographic data and presents four examples to illustrate the complex process of migrant identity construction. The results show that the migrant children deploy a range of linguistic features and claim multiple identities; in order for their identities to be established in social reality, they have to go through negotiation processes in which their identities are evaluated, ratified, challenged, or denied. Language is at the center of such processes.     

Extended visual fixation and distractibility in children from six to twenty-four months of age

Distractibility during extended visual fixations in children 6 months to 2 years of age was examined. A children's Sesame Street movie (Follow That Bird) was presented to children (N = 40) for a minimum of 20 min while fixation was videotaped and heart rate was recorded. Distractors (computer-generated patterns or another Sesame Street movie) were presented on an adjacent television screen. Consistent with prior research with older preschool-age children, the latency to turn toward the distractor was a function of the length of the look occurring before distractor onset. For the period immediately before distractor onset, children had a greater sustained lowered heart rate for the trials on which they continued looking at the center television monitor than for the trials on which they looked toward the distractor. This pattern of distractibility suggests attention increases over the course of a look toward the television, and that heart rate changes reflect this increase in attention.     

Hyperactive or “activity hyper”: Helping young children attend in appropriate environments

Why is it that young children can attend to activities at free play but have trouble paying attention during circle time? Children can be in constant motion during large group activities, but yet attend for long periods of time at the block center or while playing with puzzles. Teachers may make the premature judgment that certain children are “hyperactive,” when they may actually be “activity hyper.”     

全纳背景下幼儿教师的专业技能探讨

随着学前全纳教育的开展,很多幼儿教师在面对班级中有特殊需要的幼儿时感觉专业技能缺乏。在创设环境时,教师要时刻考虑特殊幼儿需求,使环境具有安全性、参与性、创造性和接纳性;在设计活动时,教师在活动计划、材料选择、任务分析及分组等方面都要考虑特殊幼儿;在开展活动时,教师在站位、讲解与示范、提问、倾听、引导和反馈、鼓励与赞扬等方面也要考虑特殊幼儿。在全纳班级中教师需合理运用专业技能,适当调整教育活动组织的策略,从而满足特殊幼儿的需要,让每个幼儿都能从教育活动中受益。