Infant response to stimuli of similar hue and dissimilar shape: tracing the origins of the categorization of objects by hue

This study confirms that infants, like older children, are capable of responding "categorically" to stimuli of different shape if these are similar in hue. 24 infants (mean age 20.0 weeks) were familiarized to a stimulus in 1 hue (dominant wavelength 515 nm) and in either of 2 different shapes (face of a bear or a rabbit) and then presented with 4 main test comparisons in which the familiar stimulus was paired with a novel stimulus in either the familiar or the alternate (novel) shape and in a novel hue from the same or a different category (dominant wavelengths being 548 and 482 nm, respectively, and equally different from the familiar hue). Infants displayed a preference for the novel stimuli only in the new-category hue. Control tasks with a further 40 infants (same mean age as experimental group) eliminated alternative explanations of this pattern of response in terms of differential brightness of the hues, hue preferences, or inability to discriminate the shapes.     

The interaction of attitudes toward racial membership and learning ability in school‐age children

Although prejudice exists during childhood, it is unclear how attitudes toward peers of lower or higher academic ability and from one's own or a different racial group interact. This study qualifies previous research by showing that prejudice varies according to whether children are asked to evaluate peers based on academic ability, racial membership, or both, and whether evaluations are based on cognitive, behavioural, or affective components of attitudes. Younger children, particularly girls, had greater negative biases toward lower‐ability and different‐race target children. Gender differences were specific to attitude component, age, and target child characteristics. Consistency in prejudice was found within components, but components were differentially correlated across target children. Results are discussed from a theoretical and applied perspective.     

Childhood acquired brain injury: the knowledge and training needs of special educational needs coordinators

The aim of this study was to further explore Special Educational Need Co-ordinators' (SENCos) knowledge of childhood acquired brain injury (ABI) and if they have received training on how to effectively support children and young people (CYP) with an ABI in school. SENCos from Nottinghamshire were asked to complete a survey face-to-face or online. Data reported by Howe and Ball (Support for Learning, 32, 1, 85–100), was also used to allow comparisons between different counties in the UK for knowledge of childhood ABI. Results indicated that SENCos from Nottinghamshire hold numerous uncertainties about childhood ABI, although less uncertainties than SENCos from the West Midlands. A majority SENCos from Nottinghamshire had not received training about childhood ABI. Additional challenges in supporting CYP with an ABI were also identified. The findings show a clear need for more training on childhood ABI across UK schools. It is also apparent that obtaining funding for CYP with an ABI can be a challenge for SENCos. However, further research is needed to determine what these barriers to funding are.     

Teachers conceptualizing childhood: conversations around fictional childhood texts

This article offers a unique perspective on teacher thinking by connecting the study of early childhood teachers’ beliefs with the field of childhood studies, and with film and literature studies. The purpose of the research is to examine (a) how films can be used to evoke responses in teachers about their implicit beliefs in childhood and (b) the processes through which the teachers generate conceptualizations of childhood. Focus group discussions following viewings of short film clips were conducted with five experienced teachers. Thematic analysis suggests that the selection of film narratives influences the patterns of beliefs expressed by the teachers. Conversation analysis reveals that the teachers tended to use both their own memories of childhood and their identification with children to cross boundary spaces in time (past, present, and future), and between adulthood and childhood. The teachers tended to shape their beliefs in dichotomous renderings as oppositions to others, but also to display a playful willingness to surrender themselves to interior spaces of boundary crossings, and to share and dialog their discoveries with others. In terms of implications of the study for teacher education, the use of books and films seemed to provide teachers with tools to discuss and situate their understandings of childhood in ways that involved processes of memory, identification, lived experience, and teacher practice.     

The role of early childhood settings for 4–5 year old children in early academic skills and later achievement in Australia

Formal early childhood education programs have been shown to promote the early academic skills of young children. However, the academic benefits acquired through program attendance fade quickly in the early elementary school years. Using a nationally representative sample of Australian children, we describe the programmatic and teacher differences between different types of formal early childhood programs for children between 4 and 5 years old—pre-year 1, school-based preschool, standalone preschool, and center-based child care. We examine the child and family background characteristics that are correlated with selection into different settings and how these settings are associated with children's early academic skills and on their subsequent achievement. We focus on understanding if there are differential academic benefits accrued from each program type and whether or not these benefits persist into the early elementary school years. Results indicate that maternal employment and economic disadvantage are correlated with program participation and that pre-year 1 and preschool teachers have higher qualifications. Results also show that children who attended a pre-year 1 program held an initial, significant advantage in early academic skills compared to children enrolled in center child care. Center child care was associated with higher early math skills than preschools. Children who did not attend any early childhood programming lagged behind their peers in school readiness skills. By middle childhood, all the early skill advantages had disappeared, showing rapid fadeout of academic benefits acquired from these specific types of early childhood programs. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

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.

     

儿童早期学习品质的本质内涵、因素结构及学习效应

近年来儿童早期学习品质受到国内外学术界的广泛关注。对61个国内外实证研究及25份新修订政策文本的分析表明,学界对儿童学习品质最基本的理解是学习品质关注的是儿童如何学习,而不是儿童学到了什么,描述的是儿童在趋近学习的过程中和投入学习时表现出来的一系列行为、认知与态度倾向;就其构成因素来说,主动性、坚持性、专注力、好奇心、创新创造、灵活性是实证研究与政策文件共同反映的高频因素;学习品质与儿童的在园学习与入学准备显著相关,且能直接预测儿童未来不同阶段的学业成就;学习品质对儿童的同伴关系、社会能力的发展也有显著影响,并能显著降低行为问题与学业困难方面的风险;学习品质在儿童的学习与发展中起着重要的调节作用,如可以调节低质量学校教育或家庭贫困对儿童学习与发展的负面影响,可以降低个体行为问题对其学业成就的不利影响等。学习品质在儿童早期学习与毕生发展中都具有重要的奠基性作用,未来应进一步探索更为低龄儿童学习品质的因素结构及其发展规律,加强我国教育背景下学习品质对儿童学习效应的实证检验与纵向追踪,探索学习品质发展的个体差异及其增长轨迹,开展相关准实验研究以进一步明确学习品质与学习效应之间的关系。不仅要促进我国儿童早期教育实践领域高度重视和践行儿童学习品质的培养,而且应在宏观政策层面把儿童学习品质的发展纳入学前教育质量评价体系,建立儿童学习品质发展数据库,实施儿童学习品质发展监测。     

Rough and Tumble Play: An Investigation of the Perceptions of Educators and Young Children

This research investigated rough and tumble (R&T) play in two early childhood settings. Participants included 11 educators and 17 children (5 years old). The study focused on gaining an understanding of how early childhood educators and young children interpret R&T play. The results indicate that while there is perceived value in R&T related to the development of young children, educators are uncertain of how to manage the play. The results of this study demonstrate the need for early childhood programs to develop policies to guide how R&T is managed.     

Folklore epistemology: how does traditional folklore contribute to children’s thinking and concept development?

This research utilised a ‘stimulated recall’ methodology [Calderhead, J. 1981. “Stimulated Recall: A Method for Research on Teaching.” British Journal of Educational Psychology 51: 211–217] to explore the potential of African folklore, specifically Ghanaian folk stories in the development of children’s reflective thinking about social life. The research was based on Ghanaian folklore for children, which is popularly known as ‘By the Fireside Stories’, encapsulated traditionally as Anansesem or Spider stories among the Akan of Ghana. Data were collected through storytelling to a group of children and inviting them to recall their concurrent thinking during and after the storytelling. The children’s cognitive recall processes were stimulated by questions and story character dramatisation recorded on a digital video recorder and played back to the children. Findings showed major contributions to children’s learning and development related to imagination, concept formation and thinking, and beyond the self in social relationship. This paper draws attention to how traditional oral storytelling can be an important part of early childhood education to develop children’s reflective thinking about social life.     

Using the Scientific Method to Guide Learning: An Integrated Approach to Early Childhood Curriculum

Researchers and practitioners have become increasingly interested in how early childhood programs prepare young children for science. Due to a number of factors, including educators’ low self-efficacy for teaching science and lack of educational resources, many early childhood classrooms do not offer high-quality science experiences for young children. However, high-quality science education has the potential to lay an important foundation for children’s knowledge and interest in science as well as reinforcing and integrating critical language, literacy, and math readiness skills. This paper examines the current research on science in preschool classrooms and provides suggestions on how to teach science that supports children’s development across domains. Using the scientific method to explore science with young children provides a systematic model for engaging children in observation, questioning, predicting, experimenting, summarizing, and sharing results. These processes encourage children’s use of language, literacy, and mathematics skills in authentic ways. Suggestions are provided for teachers to use the scientific method as their guide for generating scientific discovery in their classroom.     

Attentional changes in blocking are not a consequence of lateral inhibition

In three human causal learning experiments, we examined attentional modulation in the blocking task, in which participants typically learn little about a novel cue B when it is paired with a previously trained, predictive cue A. Evidence indicates that this blocking training led to a decrement in attention to the blocked cue B. The present experiments addressed whether this decrease in attention to the blocked cue could be better explained as being due to lateral inhibition from the pretrained cue A to the blocked cue B, or as a cue-specific property that is not conditional on the presence or absence of other stimuli. Strong effects of learned predictiveness were observed on participants’ causal judgments (Experiment 1) and choice behavior (Experiments 2 and 3). However, no evidence for lateral inhibitory processes emerged in any of the experiments, despite explicit attempts to maximize experimental sensitivity to this effect. The results are discussed in the context of formal models of the operation of attentional processes in human and animal learning.     

Maternal Attitudes and Parent Education: How Immigrant Mothers Support Their Child’s Education Despite Their Own Low Levels of Education

A study of Mexican immigrant mothers of young children in the AVANCE-Dallas early childhood intervention program demonstrates that low-educational parents often exhibit ambitious attitudes about educational achievement for their children. Though they lack an extensive academic background, which places their children at risk for low education, their positive attitude manifested in daily pro-educational behaviors overcomes their low education level because they both motivate their children to pursue academic success and participate in their children’s learning. The best way to capitalize on immigrant parents’ educational drive for their children is to partner with them—either through an intervention program or through early childhood educators’ interaction with parents—by showing them how their participation in their children’s learning through concrete activities (such as regular mother–child conversation, daily reading, and playtime activities that teach developmental skills) may increase their chances of achieving academic success.     

Preservice Teachers' Beliefs About Childhood: Challenges for a Participatory Early Childhood Education?

This study examines preservice teachers' beliefs about childhood in an attempt to see how they may support an active, participatory role for children in early childhood education (ECE). Three hundred sixteen early childhood preservice teachers described childhood characteristics and children's ability for decision-making in a written text. These texts were content analyzed and then quantified. Preservice teachers' beliefs about childhood were found to vary and some of their beliefs corresponded to existing scientific theories and typologies. Despite this variation, preservice teachers' beliefs had dominant ontological and epistemological presuppositions that highlighted childhood as a homogeneous period of human life, as a state of being, rather than as a dynamic and developing period of life. The majority of preservice teachers assigned children with an ability to make decisions but only under specific preconditions. We argue that these beliefs may act as obstacles for the enhancement of participatory processes in ECE due to their ontological and epistemological underpinnings. Implications of current findings in relation to teacher education are discussed.     

Exploring the Lived Experiences of Homeless Families with Young Children

This study researched the experiences of homeless families with young children between the ages of four and eight. Many families experience homelessness every year; therefore, it is important for early childhood educators to have an understanding of how homelessness affects families with young children so that educators can effectively serve the needs of homeless families as they seek to find more permanent situations for themselves and their young children. Many early childhood educators may not understand how homelessness affects young learners. This research sought: (1) to understand reasons families with young children become homeless; (2) to become aware of beneficial resources available to families and their perceptions of the resources; (3) and to examine the developmental effects that homeless living situations can have on young children. The outcomes of this study will be used to inform early childhood educators about practices as they seek to serve young children ages four to eight living homeless. Research suggested common themes as to why and how parents and young children are affected by homelessness.     

Towards a historical sociology of developmental thinking: the case of generation

This paper presents how the medico‐hygienist model of childhood, which had prevailed throughout the nineteenth century, was replaced at the turn of the twentieth century by the novel developmental model, which arose in the first decades of the 1900s and was later systematised by Piaget, Spock, etc. The medico‐hygienist model revolved around core constituents such as regulation, firmness and discipline, standardisation whose historical specificity could be, according to Elias, related to the civilising process.

The developmental model, on the other hand, is linked to the systematic scientific investigation of childhood and pertains, foremost, to the proposition that growing up was best figured in the concept of development: the figure of the child as a human who develops consistently in time and space. The key element can be worded as follows: Why is such child maturation almost universally constructed as development?

The second crucial idea of the model consists in understanding child development in terms of a (rather linear) sequence of particular stages. The equation of child maturation, both physically and psychologically, with development is crystallised in the figure of a uniform, inevitable and universal sequence of developmental stages and, accordingly, its schedule; therefore, maturation, development, stages and sequences are closely connected to children's socialisation.

My aim is to trace developmental thinking in its historical specificity by bringing to light some neglected social processes that contribute to the regulation of children and the transformation of generational relationships. These processes have always occurred in various societies, andyet I am trying to put forward an original perspective that pertains to the intersection of developmental thinking and social change. I attempt here to introduce a historic juncture of developmental thinking and social transformations that moulded children. I also attempt to track down the historical roots of the developmental framework: how it became the central principle by which we think about children today.     

幼儿科学教育中探究性学习的指导策略

探究性学习是幼儿的一种新的学习方式,它是以探究的方式进行科学活动,也是一个学习过程,它提倡幼儿在教师的指导下,以实际体验去发现问题、探究问题、解决问题,从而体验探究的乐趣,养成探究的态度和精神。幼儿的探究性活动大致可以分为四个过程：创设探究主题—引导幼儿进行探究—幼儿相互交流探究成果—教师进行正确评价。针对探究性学习的不同过程,教师要采取不同的策略。     

教育机构在幼教人才培养方面的调查研究——以南阳市幼儿园为例

新时期的社会发展对教育提出了更高的要求,幼儿教育改革和新纲要实施的深入,都对幼儿教师的教育提出了新的挑战,而幼儿教师的职前培养对教师的专业化发展和教育水平的提高发挥着重要的影响作用。因此,通过对在职教师教育现状进行调查和分析,总结在职幼儿教师在职业态度、专业能力、专业观念、专业知识、专业技能和研究能力等方面的情况,可以明确不同类型幼儿教师培养机构在对幼儿园所需人才教师培养方面的优势和不足,为各层次幼儿教师的培养提供一定的参考依据,在制定新的培养方案时更加有的放矢,更加具有针对性和实效性。     

Early childhood mathematics teaching: challenges,difficulties and priorities of teachers of young children in primary schools in Ireland

Issues of pedagogy are critical in all aspects of early childhood education. Early childhood mathematics is no exception. There is now a great deal of guidance available to teachers in terms of high‐quality early childhood mathematics teaching. Consequently, the characteristics of high‐quality early childhood mathematics education are clearly identifiable. Issues such as building on young children’s prior‐to‐school knowledge; engaging children in general mathematical processes; and assessing and documenting children’s learning are some of the key aspects of high‐quality early childhood mathematics education. The extent to which teachers of four‐ and five‐year‐old children in primary schools in Ireland incorporate current pedagogical guidance in early childhood mathematics education was explored in 2007 in a nationally representative questionnaire survey of teachers of four‐ and five‐year‐old children attending primary schools. This paper presents some of the findings of the study in relation to teachers’ self‐reported challenges, difficulties and priorities in teaching early childhood mathematics. Implications are drawn for professional development, curriculum guidance and educational policy.     

Teacher–Child Interactions in Infant/Toddler Child Care and Socioemotional Development

Research Findings: The teacher–child relationships that develop in infant/toddler child care provide a critical caregiving context for young children’s socioemotional development. However, gaps remain in researchers’ understanding of the individual-level processes that facilitate socioemotional development, specifically in center-based child care programs. Guided by ecological theory, this article offers a review of the current literature on this topic, including influential factors and developmental outcomes associated with teacher–child interaction quality, the teacher–child relationship as a compensatory mechanism for children facing risk, and differential susceptibility to caregiving experiences. Practice or Policy: Within the context of infant/toddler child care, many opportunities exist for researchers to refine the measurement of individual teacher–child interactions, test young children’s self-regulation as an outcome variable, and develop understanding of compensatory and differential susceptibility mechanisms. Clarifying these processes will inform early childhood education teacher training in terms of how teachers can best facilitate healthy socioemotional outcomes, especially for the most vulnerable children.     

Early life stress and perceived social isolation influence how children use value information to guide behavior

Learning the value of environmental signals and using that information to guide behavior is critical for survival. Stress in childhood may influence these processes, but how it does so is still unclear. This study examined how stressful event exposures and perceived social isolation affect the ability to learn value signals and use that information in 72 children (8–9 years; 29 girls; 65.3% White). Stressful event exposures and perceived social isolation did not influence how children learned value information. But, children with high stressful event exposures and perceived social isolation were worse at using that information. These data suggest alterations in how value information is used, rather than learned, may be one mechanism linking early experiences to later behaviors.