Happy Children’s Day

看下面这两幅图,你能从中找出五处不同吗?Look at these two pictures.Can you find fivedifferences between these two pictures?The girl’s_____are different.The_____is different.The_____are different.The colors of_____are different.The_____is different.本期IQ T     

Children’s Extracurricular Activities

Why do children learn in different ways: some are good students who show interest and zeal, while others are lazy and have to be taught against their will? Why do schools have over- and underachievers? Of course, there are a multitude of reasons. But almost 50 years ago it was shown using large data sets that families with high socioeconomic status are more likely to have children who are good students. Of course, there are many examples of successful students from poor families. However, they tend to be the exception to the rule. The certainty of success in school increases with rising socioeconomic status.     

Children’s Charm in Mark Twain’s Two Adventures

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn gave their merits by the children protagonists.In Encyclopedia America,it says that Mark Twain is best known     

Families’ Selection of Children’s Literature Books

This study examined families’ choices of children’s literature books for joint story reading. Teachers, parents, and their children from five kindergarten classrooms participated in the study. Over a 4 months period, family members joined other parents twice a week to learn and practice story reading techniques. They selected children’s literature books that were of interest to both of them and their children and were developmentally appropriate. Family members were interviewed and responded to a questionnaire before the intervention. The results provided insight in relation to the parents’ perceptions about literacy, reading with families, and story reading. All members of the families read to their children frequently or daily and engaged the children in conversations about the books read. The books chosen to be read to the children were categorized by genre, with modern fiction being the most popular genre.     

Preschool Children’s Perceptions of Fairness

Most studies on fairness behavior in preschool focus on fair resource allocation and on children’s behavior when faced with fairness dilemmas. The purpose of this study is to understand preschoolers’ point of view: what do they think when presented with various scenarios that call for fairness behavior? We interviewed 66 children aged 3.5–6 years, half of them girls, asking them about four social events in preschool life. We found that the children included three aspects in their answers that constituted the foundation of their perception of fairness and construal of social events: an explanation, expression of empathy and offering a solution. The children did so spontaneously and consistently. Moreover, the results showed that the more personally committed to the scenario the children felt, the fairer the behavior they reported. The study underscores various aspects of fairness and suggests referring to them both in research and in educational practice.     

A Study of Children’s Fears

In carefully examining the thesis of a paper by Anderson, Nelson, and Edgington (1984) concerning the socalled Fool’s Type IIa error, one realizes that certain fundamental statistical tenets have been overlooked or ignored. The purpose of the present paper is to discount the notion of a Fool’s Type IIa error under the Neyman-Pearson philosophy of testing statistical hypotheses and to highlight the need for improved statistical education related to hypothesis testing. If the importance of Type I and Type II errors cannot be quantified, then the Neyman-Pearson approach to hypothesis testing is of no value, and hence a Fool’s Type IIa error is irrelevant. If statistical testing errors are important and can be quantified, then adjustment for the Fool’s Type IIa error region is equivalent to increasing the probability of making a Type I error.     

Children’s Social and Academic Competence

Abstract

Interpersonal problem-solving ability (IPS), assertiveness, and self-esteem were assessed for 128 boys and 113 girls in fourth to sixth grades and related to competence with peers, teachers, and academic subjects. A sub-packet factor analysis and a correlational analysis of children’s scores on IPS, assertiveness, and self-esteem revealed assertiveness as a distinct factor with considerable overlap between IPS and self-esteem. Significant positive correlations were found between each factor and grade point average, teacher ratings of comportment, and observations of classroom behavior, but not peer status. These results suggest further research in two areas: (a) the domain specificity of social competence, and (b) analysis of individual children’s profiles of skill deficits and strengths.     

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.     

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.     

Children’s Self-Reported Effects of Stimulant Medication

This study determined the self-reported positive and negative physical, academic, and social effects of stimulant medication on middle/junior high school and high school students who have been diagnosed with AD/HD. The study also identified other students’ attitudes toward those diagnosed with AD/HD and receiving stimulant medication. Students in regular education classrooms, classrooms for students with an emotional disturbance, and classrooms for students with learning disabilities participated by filling out a questionnaire. A convenience sample of 925 students in Wisconsin and Minnesota participated in the study. Eighty-six of the students were taking stimulant medication for the treatment of AD/HD. Students did report experiencing side effects from the medication. The social and behavioural effects of the medication rather than the academic achievement enhancement effects appear to be the reasons for taking stimulant medication. Students not taking stimulant medication reported neither they nor teachers treated students taking stimulant medication differently.     

Children’s morphological awareness and reading ability

We investigated the effects of morphological awareness on five measures of reading in 103 children from Grades 1 to 3. Morphological awareness was assessed with a word analogy task that included a wide range of morphological transformations. Results indicated that the new measure had satisfactory reliability, and that morphological awareness was a significant predictor of word reading accuracy and speed, pseudoword reading accuracy, text reading speed, and reading comprehension, after controlling the effects of verbal and nonverbal ability and phonological awareness. Morphological awareness also explained variance in reading comprehension after further controlling word reading. We conclude that morphological awareness has important roles in word reading and reading comprehension, and we suggest that it should be included more frequently in assessments and instruction.     

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 Voices on Bullying in Kindergarten

Research suggests that bullying does occur in kindergarten. The extent of bullying in Norway and other Scandinavian countries is estimated to be about 12 %. The purpose of this study is to investigate children’s understanding and experiences of bullying. We use a qualitative approach and have conducted individual interviews and focus group interviews with a total of 31 children, 5 year-olds, in 4 different kindergartens. Additionally, observations were made of 4–5 year-olds in the same kindergartens, 142 children in total. The results show that the children describe bullying as doing or saying “something mean”. Exclusion from play is what all the children fear the most. This study shows that 1–2 children in each kindergarten are systematically excluded from play, and these children are overlooked by both other children and the adults in kindergarten.     

Children’s Daily Routines During Kindergarten Transition

Routines are an important feature of family life and functioning in families with young children. Common daily routines such as dinnertime, bedtime, and waking activities are powerful organizers of family behavior and may be instrumental to children and families during times of transition, such as elementary school entry. Daily routines were examined in 132 families with children entering kindergarten. Although the majority of families reported regular daily routines for their children, parents anticipated that their child’s daily routines would substantially shift upon kindergarten entry, including changes in children’s sleep habits. Significant changes in child and family routines have been implicated in adjustment difficulties during kindergarten transition. Results of this investigation are discussed in terms of aligning family daily routines with kindergarten expectations. Furthermore, educational professionals in early childhood education and elementary school can partner with families to promote seamless kindergarten transitions for all children.     

Small Talk: Children’s Everyday ‘Molecule’ Ideas

This paper reports on 6–11-year-old children’s ‘sayings and doings’ (Harré 2002) as they explore molecule artefacts in dialectical-interactive teaching interviews (Fleer, Cultural Studies of Science Education 3:781–786, 2008; Hedegaard et al. 2008). This sociocultural study was designed to explore children’s everyday awareness of and meaning-making with cultural molecular artefacts. Our everyday world is populated with an ever increasing range of molecular or nanoworld words, symbols, images, and games. What do children today say about these artefacts that are used to represent molecular world entities? What are the material and social resources that can influence a child’s everyday and developing scientific ideas about ‘molecules’? How do children interact with these cognitive tools when given expert assistance? What meaning-making is afforded when children are socially and materially assisted in using molecular tools in early chemical and nanoworld thinking? Tool-dependent discursive studies show that provision of cultural artefacts can assist and direct developmental thinking across many domains of science (Schoultz et al., Human Development 44:103–118, 2001; Siegal 2008). Young children’s use of molecular artefacts as cognitive tools has not received much attention to date (Jakab 2009a, b). This study shows 6–11-year-old children expressing everyday ideas of molecular artefacts and raising their own questions about the artefacts. They are seen beginning to domesticate (Erneling 2010) the words, symbols, and images to their own purposes when given the opportunity to interact with such artefacts in supported activity. Discursive analysis supports the notion that using ‘molecules’ as cultural tools can help young children to begin ‘putting on molecular spectacles’ (Kind 2004). Playing with an interactive game (ICT) is shown to be particularly helpful in assisting children’s early meaning-making with representations of molecules, atoms, and their chemical symbols.     

Validation of Preschool Teachers’ Recall of Children’s Behavior

A multiple-choice behavioral observation scale designed to be used by preschool teachers (N = 424) was factor analyzed to obtain factor coefficients. The four factors obtained were cognitive skills, self-control, relationship with achievement model, and dependency. The factor coefficients were then applied to the ratings of 153 preschool disadvantaged children by 33 teachers and 64 teacher aides. Three multi-trait, multi-rater matrices were analyzed using Campbell and Fiske’s convergent discriminant validation procedures. The analyses supported convergent and discriminant validity of three of the four traits.