Correction to: Examining Agency in Children’s Nonfiction Picture Books

Children's Literature in Education - In the original publication of the article unfortunately contained a mistake in the name of co-author Vera Sotirvoska.The correct name should be Vera...     

The Polysystem and the Translation of Children’ s Literature

Polysystem Theory was developed in 1970s by Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar,and was well known for its three circumstances.Children’ literature,as a special branch of literature,attracts more and more research nowadays.This paper explores the process of translation of Children’ s Literature in China under polysystem.     

Knowledge Restructuring in the Development of Children’s Cosmologies

The development of children’s cosmologies was investigated over a 13‐year period, using multi‐modal, in‐depth interviews with 686 children (217 boys, 227 girls from New Zealand and 129 boys, 113 girls from China), aged 2–18. Children were interviewed while they observed the apparent motion of the Sun and Moon, and other features of the Earth; drew their ideas of the shape and motion of the Earth, Moon and Sun, and the causes of daytime and night‐time; then modelled them using play‐dough; which led into discussion of related ideas. These interviews revealed that children’s cosmologies were far richer than previously thought and surprisingly similar in developmental trends across the two cultures. There was persuasive evidence of three types of conceptual change: a long‐term process (over years) similar to weak restructuring; a medium‐term process (over months) akin to radical restructuring; and a dynamic form of conceptual crystallisation (often in seconds) whereby previously unconnected/conflicting concepts gel to bring new meaning to previously isolated ideas. The interview technique enabled the researchers to ascertain children’s concepts from intuitive, cultural, and scientific levels. The evidence supports the argument that children have coherent cosmologies that they actively create to make sense of the world rather than fragmented, incoherent “knowledge‐in‐pieces”.     

Children’s Illustrated Magazines in the Era of Post-Soviet Transformation

Abstract

The study of Russian children’s illustrated magazines at the various stages of their formation and development remains a relevant topic due to the evolution of their printed forms in the context of the transformation of the media environment. The first Russian children’s magazine was Children’s Reading for the Heart and Mind [Detskoye chteniye dlya serdtsa i razuma] (1785–1789). This publication contributed to the creation of Russian periodical literature for children, and it provided the point of departure for the creative efforts of numerous publications that followed in its footsteps, including even present-day Russian children’s magazines.

The aim of the present article is to study the evolution of the forms of Russian children’s illustrated magazines under modern processes of the transformation of the media environment. This goal has determined the objectives of the paper: to study empirical materials related to this topic, consisting of numerous children’s publications from different historical periods; identifying the relevant stages of the development of children’s periodicals; examining the content and formal characteristics of children’s periodicals; applying an integrated approach to working with the most important aspects of Russian children’s magazines in the process of transforming the media reality.

Our research methodology is based on a structural approach, which has been updated to incorporate structural-functional, structural-formal, and system-synergetic approaches as well as linear regression methodology. The problems that arise from the epistemological context are determined by the significance of the integrated approach to the study of the formal structure of Russian children’s illustrated magazines. When we review the state of research in this area, we see that there have been very few studies of Russian periodicals for children despite the relevance of the topic.

During the process of their formation and development, children’s magazines came into being as a special type of publication with varying subject-thematic, ideological, political, pedagogical, and commercial orientations. They differed in their target audience, content, and presentation, and they were made available to a wide circle of readers. The content of these publications mainly included fiction, journalism, nonfiction articles, sociopolitical commentary, entertainment, and advertising. We have provided a theoretical justification of our research methodology, which uses the general scientific structural method and facilitates the study of the evolution of Russian children’s illustrated magazines. The methodology has allowed us to draw conclusions about how their formal structure as well as the larger media environment were transformed over time.     

Children’s Interest in Reading the Comics

The three traditional methods of backward, forward, and stepwise selection of variables to be included in a “best” regression equation were compared to a method designed to maximize weight validity. With student achievement as the criterion, and aptitudinal variables manifesting considerable multicolinearity as predictors, the subset of variables selected by the traditional methods performed poorer than the one selected by the weight validity maximization method. Implications for constructing regression equations for prediction are discussed, with consideration of the weight validity maximization method recommended in crucial situations.     

Children’s Evaluations of the Hypothetical Administration of Implicit Rewards in the Classroom

The reactions that children had to the hypothetical administration of implicit rewards in the classroom were investigated by interviewing 84 elementary school children under two experimental conditions, direct contingent rewards (DCR) and implicit rewards (IR), plus four treatments within the latter condition. Results indicated that there were some differences between children’s responses to the hypothetical IR situation and previous responses to the actual IR situation. In particular, children considered that others would not be as distressed when they (the subjects) were treated unfairly as when the situation was reversed. Additionally, performance decrements present under the actual IR conditions were not predicted by the subjects in this study. Implications for classroom applications of operant procedures are discussed.     

Children’s informal learning in the context of schools of the knowledge society

This paper builds on a key finding of a 5-year Danish research project con-cerning children in the 7 to 15 age group: children’s principal use of computers and the internet takes place in their spare time, and it is during their spare time that the majority of children really learn how to use interactive media. The project shows that in children’s spare-time use of ICT they employ informal forms of learning based to a large extent on their social interaction both in physical and virtual spaces. These informal learning forms can be identified as learning hierarchies, learning communities and learning networks; they are important contributions to the school of the knowledge society. The ICT in New Learning Environments project based on anthropologically inspired methods and social learning theories shows that students bring their informal forms of learning into the school context. This happens particularly when the school has undergone physical alterations and when its organisation of learning and teaching are also restructured, with project-based learning becoming an important part of the school work and with the media available in the learning environment. Using organisation theory, the school working with ICT and project-based learning is shown to simultaneously constitute a mixed mode between the school of the industrial and the knowledge society. The research shows that it is possible to tip the balance in the direction of the school of the knowledge society, and thus of the future, by comprehensively using ICT and project work in the day-to-day activities of the school, alongside and integrated with the traditional forms of learning, and not least by employing the informal learning processes children develop outside school. For teachers this will mean an extension of their function: no longer merely communicators of knowledge, they will have to become knowledge managers and overall leaders of projects, and this entails much more dialogue with the pupils.

Teachers’ and Children’s Perceptions of Creativity In High- and Low-Anxious Children

Abstract

Expectations of citizens for the role of the school board with respect to four educational concerns were examined with educational attainment and family income of citizens as independent variables. The population for the study was 1,794 citizens in twelve Wisconsin school districts. Citizens were placed in one of five education and one of five family income groups and mean expectation scores were treated statistically with analysis of variance and the Sheff6 post hoc means test. Expectation scares were obtained from responses to four sets of interview questions scaled from conservative to liberal. Generally, the higher the educational attainment and family income of citizens, the more liberal were their expectations for the role of the school board.     

Thought-Experiments About Gravity in the History of Science and in Research into Children’s Thinking

This article examines the main strands of thinking about gravity through the ages and the continuity of thought-experiments, from the early Greeks, through medieval times, to Galileo, Newton and Einstein. The key ideas are used to contextualise an empirical study of 247 children’s ideas about falling objects carried out in China and New Zealand, including the use of scenarios involving thrown and dropped items, and objects falling down deep well holes (as in Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland). The sample included 68 pre-school pupils, 68 primary school pupils, 56 middle school students, and 55 high school students; with approximately equal numbers in each group and of boys and girls in each group in each culture. The methodology utilised Piagetian interviews with three media (verbal language, drawing, and play-dough), a shadow stick; and everyday items including model people and soft model animals. The data from each group was categorised and analysed with Kolmogorov–Smirnov Two-Sample Tests and Spearman r _s coefficients. It was hypothesised and confirmed (at K–S alpha levels .05; r _s : p < .001) that cross-age and cross-cultural research and analysis would reveal that (a) an intuitive sense of gravity is present from an early age and develops in association with concepts like Earth shape and motion; (b) the development of concepts of gravity is similar in cultures such as China and New Zealand where teachers hold a scientific world view; and (c) children’s concepts of Earth motion, Earth shape, and gravity are coherent rather than fragmented. It was also demonstrated that multi-media interviews together with concrete experiences and thought-experiments afforded children the opportunity to share their emerging concepts of gravity. The findings provide information that teachers might use for lessons at an appropriate level.     

Motor Impairment in Children’s Literature: Asking the Children

How do schoolchildren respond when they encounter a wheelchair user in a fictional text? This article describes a doctoral project where groups of children were presented with excerpts from books by Hilary McKay and Jacqueline Wilson in which wheelchair users play a significant role. The pupils were asked to discuss issues arising from these readings. The views pupils expressed were relevant, imaginative and positive. Only on two rare occasions did the pupils respond in ways that could be categorised as prejudicial towards disabled people. The article describes the methodology adopted for the study, directly quotes from and explores the views of the pupils. The teaching of children about disability and disabled people currently in the English curriculum for Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) is alleged to be inadequate; a weakness which could be addressed in the manner described, using literature for sensitive educational debate. This study is unusual in that the research subjects include a group of children who are motor impaired. The Doctor of Education who conducted the research for her thesis and authored this article is also herself a fulltime wheelchair user.     

Mappaemundi,Maps and the Romantic Aesthetic in Children’s Books

This article considers the extent to which medieval mappaemundi are an important precedent for literary cartographies in fiction for children. It connects the notion of embeddedness to Peta Mitchell’s (2011) suggestion that mappaemundi refused to entertain the later, post-Enlightenment cartographic distinction between subject and environment, positing instead the “absorption” of the medieval subject into the religious medieval world space. The article documents some of the visual conventions that maps in children’s literature have appropriated from mappaemundi. In doing so, it articulates the contradictions inherent both to ecological rhetoric and cartographic space and the visual lexicon of maps included with children’s books, which contribute to a rhetoric of ecomimesis. The article argues that maps in children’s literature are invested in a rhetoric of ecomimesis, that we are, as Timothy Morton (2009) has it, “embedded” in Nature, and that this embeddedness conceit threatens to forestall critique in that it reproduces the related oppositions of culture/Nature, subject/object and subject/environment even as it appears to collapse their respective terms. In the process, it considers maps in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (2007/1719), the Alderley Edge books of Alan Garner, Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons (2012/1930), and Rosemary Sutcliff’s Outcast (1998/1955).     

Mothers’ Perceptions of the Climate of Their Children’s Schools: Covariations With Children’s Academic Adjustment in Families of Mexican Origin

Although Latinx parents’ perceptions of the climate of their children’s schools may play a role in their children’s academic adjustment, research examining this idea is sparse. Every 2 years beginning when children were in fifth grade (M_age = 10.86 years) until they were in 11th grade, Mexican-origin mothers (N = 674) reported on their perceptions of the climate of their children’s schools; information on children’s academic adjustment was collected from children and mothers. Multilevel modeling indicated that when mothers had more positive school climate perceptions, their children valued school more and performed better in school, but did not necessarily hold higher educational expectations. The findings suggest the importance of schools in creating welcoming environments for Mexican-origin parents.     

Preschool Children’s Social Play and Involvement in the Outdoor Environment

Research Findings: The primary purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between social play and involvement in the outdoor preschool environment. The study included 173 children ranging in age from 3 to 6 years (M_age = 3.95, SD = 0.82) and attending 19 preschools in the Basque Country (Spain). A total of 51 teachers (50 women, 1 man) also participated. Our results indicated that there is a relationship between social participation and involvement and that group play is the type of play that best predicts greater involvement. No significant differences in levels of involvement were found between boys and girls, although gender was found to have a moderating effect on the relationship between the type of group play and involvement. Practice or Policy: The results are discussed with reference to the need to implement innovations in the outdoor preschool environment that have a positive effect on child development. The outdoor environment should promote social participation as well as gender equality and inclusion, and consequently it should be designed to offer both access to a natural environment and multiple opportunities for play.     

Children’s early numeracy in England,Finland and People’s Republic of China

This research investigated the similarities and differences between countries in young children’s early numeracy skills related to age, culture, and gender. The participants were five‐year‐old children from Beijing (People’s Republic of China), England, and Finland. The rationale for the cross‐cultural comparison originates from research results with older children showing that Asian children outperform children from America or Europe, and from the lack of such information concerning younger children. The results showed that in all locations older children performed better than the younger children. Cultural differences were found: young children from Beijing outperformed those from England and Finland in overall early numeracy performance, as well as in sub‐tests for understanding of quantities and relations (i.e. relational skills), and counting skills. Finnish children had better scores than English children in the whole early numeracy scale and in the relational scale. The results are discussed in relation to culture, instruction in preschools, and learning support at home, as well as the effects of language characteristics. The culture’s appreciation of and approach to mathematics learning in early childhood is a plausible explanation for the cross‐cultural differences found in this study.     

Children’s Ecoliterature and the New Nature Study

This essay explores how nineteenth-century nature study principles inform a twenty-first century New Nature Study movement, and gives examples of a trend toward nature writing in recent picture books. The pedagogical principles of nineteenth-century nature study, ascendant at the turn of the twentieth century and implicit in interwar children’s literature, yielded to a model founded on Cold War competition rather than environmental stewardship. In mid-century narratives for children, technological progress prevailed. In the 1990s, the ideals of the first nature study movement reemerged in a call for meaningful conservation to sustain future generations. Like the original nature study, the New Nature Study arises from anxieties about industrial development, habitat loss and extinction, and hazards to childhood itself. The New Nature Study treats children as agents for change and citizens being denied their full human rights when their land, soil, water, and lives are bought and sold.     

Nature of Interactions Among Young Children and Adult Caregivers in a Children’s Museum

This naturalistic, qualitative study examines the nature of child- and adult-led interactions in a children’s museum. Using dialogic learning as a theoretical framework, the study examines how children and adults engage in interactions while learning at a museum. Findings suggest that children and adults are almost equally likely to lead interactions; however, most child-led interactions are qualitatively different from adult-led interactions. Children are more likely to show-and-tell about their experiences and learn by asking questions and commenting about their play. Adults are more likely to teach by telling, prompting, and reporting a child’s activities. Children and adults also are equally engage in pretend play during their interactions. Leveraging these findings, recommendations are made for museum exhibit space design.     

Emotional and psychological well-being in children: the development and validation of the Stirling Children’s Well-being Scale

The Stirling Children’s Well-being Scale (SCWBS) was developed by the Stirling Council Educational Psychology Service (UK) as a holistic, positively worded measure of emotional and psychological well-being in children aged eight to 15 years. Drawing on current theories of well-being and Positive Psychology, the aim was to provide a means of measuring the effectiveness of interventions and projects designed to promote children’s well-being and emotional development.

A total of 18 schools and 1849 children participated in the construction and validation of the scale, which ultimately emerged as a short, robust measure comprising 12 items. The scale is offered for use by educational and health professionals interested in promoting and measuring the emotional development and well-being of children and the effectiveness of interventions.