Linking parental scaffolding with self-regulated learning in Chinese kindergarten children

The current study aimed to examine the relationships between dimensions of parental scaffolding and children's self-regulated learning (SRL). One hundred and thirty Chinese kindergarten children participated in a range of problem-solving tasks with their parents and independently. Parent-child interactions and child-alone behaviours were video-recorded for an in-depth observational analysis. Parental cognitive support, emotional support, and contingency were coded in parent-child interactions. Children's cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational strategic behaviours and task performance were coded and assessed within the context of child-alone tasks. Results showed that contingency was particularly important for children's SRL. Parental contingency was the only independent predictor of children's SRL among the three aspects of parental scaffolding and mediated the effect of parent education levels on children's SRL.     

Kindergarten reading and writing curricula in the European Union

The aim of this study was to examine whether the current literacy programmes in European Union kindergarten curricula support and enhance young children's reading and writing development. This study investigated whether the kindergarten curricula of 10 European countries: Britain, Belgium, France, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and Sweden set appropriate goals for young children's acquisition of literacy, provide methodological guidelines that support children's active engagement in reading and writing activities, provide a print‐rich classroom environment, emphasise the communicative nature of reading and writing and use play in the learning process. The comparative data analysis showed that European kindergarten curricula seem to support and enhance young children's reading and writing development, and that early literacy acquisition is based on the principles of the new perspective of the emergence of literacy.     

Exploring young children's performance on and acceptance of an educational scenario-based digital game for teaching route-planning strategies: a case study

Researchers suggest that game-based learning (GBL) can be used to facilitate mathematics learning. However, empirical GBL research that targets young children is still limited. The purposes of the study is to develop a scenario-based digital game to promote children's route-planning ability, to empirically explore children's learning performance in route planning through the game, and to probe children's technology acceptance of the game. A total of 71 children participated in the study, and both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used, including an interview analysis as well as performance and content analyses of learners’ route-planning tasks. The findings showed that the game had a positive effect on children's learning of route-planning strategies, that children's route-planning strategies were improved with the support of the game, and that children demonstrated high technology acceptance toward the game. This study may be of importance in offering insight into children's GBL.     

Preliminary construct and concurrent validity of the Preschool Self-regulation Assessment (PSRA) for field-based research

This study introduces a portable direct assessment of young children's self-regulation—the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment (PSRA). The PSRA was designed to assess self-regulation in emotional, attentional, and behavioral domains by using a brief, structured battery of tasks in conjunction with a global report of children's behavior. Factor analyses from a pilot sample (N = 63) of Head Start children revealed two self-regulation factors reflecting children's performance on tasks of impulse control and tasks of compliance/executive control. Assessor report of children's behavior during the assessment was reduced into two additional factors reflecting children's global attention/impulse control and positive emotion. Moderate correlations between self-regulation factors and children's social competence, behavior problems, and early academic skills, provide preliminary evidence of the new measure's validity, and additional empirical evidence for bivariate relations between academic and self-regulatory competence.     

Parental writing support and preschoolers’ early literacy,language, and fine motor skills

The current study examines the nature and variability of parents’ aid to preschoolers in the context of a shared writing task, as well as the relations between this support and children's literacy, vocabulary, and fine motor skills. In total, 135 preschool children (72 girls) and their parents (primarily mothers) in an ethnically diverse, middle-income community were observed while writing a semi-structured invitation for a pretend birthday party together. Children's phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, word decoding, vocabulary, and fine motor skills were also assessed. Results revealed that parents provided variable, but generally low-level, support for children's approximation of sound-symbol correspondence in their writing (i.e., graphophonemic support), as well as for their production of letter forms (i.e., print support). Parents frequently accepted errors rather than asking for corrections (i.e., demand for precision). Further analysis of the parent–child dyads (n = 103) who wrote the child's name on the invitation showed that parents provided higher graphophonemic, but not print, support when writing the child's name than other words. Overall parental graphophonemic support was positively linked to children's decoding and fine motor skills, whereas print support and demand for precision were not related to any of the child outcomes. In sum, this study indicates that while parental support for preschoolers’ writing may be minimal, it is uniquely linked to key literacy-related outcomes in preschool.     

Social Relationships,Peer Collaboration and Children's Oral Language

This study examined the influence of peer collaboration and social context on children's use of literate language. Literate language is defined as a specific oral language register. It was hypothesised that friend, compared to non-friend dyads would evidence more literate language in the form of talk about cognitive and linguistic processes. Same gender dyads of 7- and 8-year-old children were observed during collaborative writing tasks in friend or non-friend groups, and measures of oral language were collected. The findings suggested that different peer relationships differentially effect children's oral language in the areas of conflicts, social regulation, and metacognitive and literate language. The data support the proposition that different sorts of peer relationships and instructional settings affect children's interactions and early literacy development. The results are discussed in terms of the role of social regulation in the context of peer collaboration.     

Early Parenting and the Development of Externalizing Behavior Problems: Longitudinal Mediation Through Children's Executive Function

Path analysis was used to investigate the longitudinal associations among parenting and children's executive function and externalizing behavior problems from 36 to 90 months of age in the Family Life Project (N = 1,115), a study of child development in the context of rural poverty. While controlling for stability in the constructs, semistructured observations of parenting prospectively predicted performance on a battery of executive function tasks and primary caregivers' reports of externalizing behavior. Furthermore, the association between early parenting and later externalizing behavior was longitudinally mediated by executive function, providing support for a process model in which sensitive parenting promotes children's self‐regulation, which in turn reduces children's externalizing behavior.     

Relationship between maternal scaffolding and preschooler's metacognitive strategies in a problem-solving situation

This study examined how mothers' scaffolding predicts preschoolers' metacognitive strategies and task performance. N = 132 preschoolers and their mothers participated in the study. Problem-solving tasks were solved in mother-child interactions and independently. Mothers' scaffolding (means; cognitive, metacognitive, autonomy support) and mother-child task performance were coded during mother-child interactions. Children's metacognitive strategies and task performance were coded during child-alone problem-solving. Path-model analyses found that mothers' metacognitive support was negatively – and autonomy support positively – associated with mother-child task performance. Mothers' scaffolding means served different scaffolding intentions, building two scaffolding strategies: (1) Mothers using more scaffolding means provided more cognitive support, which was related to lower levels of children's metacognitive strategies. (2) Mothers using fewer scaffolding means provided more autonomy support, which was related to higher levels of children's metacognitive strategies. This study demonstrates the importance of examining scaffolding strategies and shows that different scaffolding strategies may be relevant in joint and child-alone problem-solving.     

Taiwanese families' perspectives on learning disabilities: an exploratory study in three middle schools

The purpose of this study was to investigate families' perspectives on learning disabilities (LD) in Taiwan. A researcher‐designed survey was sent out to families of children with or without LD from three middle schools. Data from 153 participants were gathered and analysed. The survey consisted of four sections, namely demographic information, children's reading performance, families' general understanding and perspectives of LD. Specifically, the last section of 54 Likert scale items designed to gather information about families' perspectives of LD was analysed with five domains: causes of LD (inherent or acquired), conceptions and misconceptions, attitudes (acceptance or rejection), disclosure of disabilities (willing or unwilling), and support. Results indicated that families were not familiar with educational services related to LD in schools. Additionally, families' experiences with people with disabilities resulted in different perspectives regarding the causes and conceptions about LD, and acquiring support. Families' perspectives on LD also correlated with personal characteristics, including the level of their children's reading performance, number of children and income level. The cultural implications of these findings interplay with an emphasis on academic performance are discussed.     

The literacy environment of preschool classrooms: contributions to children's emergent literacy growth

This study examined the relations among features of the classroom physical literacy environment (book materials, literacy area and writing materials) and psychological literacy environment (instructional support), and preschool children's gains in two areas of emergent literacy over an academic year. Results showed that features of the physical literacy environment had little direct association with children's gains in emergent literacy, with the exception of quality of literacy area being a positive and significant predictor of children's gains in alphabet knowledge (but not name‐writing ability). Rather, the physical and psychological literacy environment seem to be interdependent, particularly with respect to provision of writing materials. Specifically, presence of writing materials is positively and significantly associated with children's growth in alphabet knowledge and name‐writing ability only within the context of high‐quality, instructionally supportive classrooms. Educational implications are discussed.     

Morphological Awareness and Chinese Children's Literacy Development: An Intervention Study

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between morphological awareness and Chinese children's literacy development. Of the 169 children from elementary schools in Beijing, China, who participated in the study, about half received enhanced instruction on the morphology of characters and words in the first and second grade. At the beginning of second grade and at the beginning of third grade, children were tested on morphological awareness, reading, and writing. The results showed that morphological instruction substantially improved children's performance on the morphological awareness and literacy measures. The best-fitting structural equation models suggested a unidirectional causal relation in early second grade and a reciprocal relation in early third grade between morphological awareness and children's literacy development.     

Conservation development in the partially sighted child

A comparative study of conservation development in partially sighted, sighted, and sighted blindfolded children at four age levels (6–7, 8–9, 10–11, and 12–15 yrs.) was assessed. Conservation on tasks of mass, weight, and volume were evaluated using Piaget and Inhelder's (1941) prediction, judgment, and explanation questions. The significant differences were found between groups, task, and age level. Visually impaired children's performance was inferior to sighted children at all age levels, while little difference was found between partially sighted and blindfolded children's performance. For all three groups, conservation of mass was easiest, followed by conservation of weight, then volume. The findings support the notion of a developmental lag in cognitive skills for partially sighted children.     

Reading beneath the lines of children's stories

This paper is drawn from a study of 10-12 year-old children's stories, the specific purpose of which was to provide a means of investigating the influence of television and videos on children's imagination. Faced with the need to understand nearly 500 stories from their authors' points of view, that is interpreting the authors' meanings and intentions rather than constructing my own meaning as a reader, I found myself wondering how the 'reading' of these texts was to be undertaken. The paper describes the technique I devised for this task and what I found it could reveal about the subtlety, complexity and multiple meanings that can often be discovered in children's stories.The potential power of such an approach to reading children's writing raises issues about the assessment of school writing.     

Mother–child joint writing in Chinese kindergarteners: metalinguistic awareness,maternal mediation and literacy acquisition

The present study examined the relations of Chinese word reading and writing to both maternal mediation of writing and a number of metalinguistic and cognitive skills in 63 Hong Kong Chinese kindergarteners. The whole process of maternal mediation of writing, in which mothers individually facilitated their children's writing of 12 two‐character words in their own ways, was videotaped. This study replicated and extended previous work on the cognitive strategies mothers use to help children in writing Chinese words. Mothers' typical mediation strategies were positively and significantly associated with both children's independent word reading and writing. In addition, maternal mediation of writing was uniquely associated with Chinese word reading, but not word writing, even with metalinguistic and cognitive skills, including phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic processing and visual knowledge, statistically controlled. Findings underscore the importance of mothers' early scaffolding in facilitating children's literacy acquisition.     

Children's responses to questions about transformations and their relationship to strategies used in problem solving

This paper describes some preliminary results comparing two groups of children's performance on a set of Piagetian conservation tasks. The findings point to the need to sensitise parents and teachers to current views on appropriate learning environments for young children, in particular, the strategies that they might use to make sense of their experiences. In addition, the findings are used to support the argument that it is important to emphasise adults’ roles in giving structure and direction to children's early learning experiences. It is anticipated that if parents and some teachers understand the basis for this approach to tutoring, their support and encouragement will relieve the potentially damaging pressure to ‘ succeed at all costs ‘, a current dilemma for parents of children in Singapore. Given the emphasis on structure and attainment in the Singaporean Pre‐Schools in this paper, experiences involving aspects of problem solving are selected for investigation, given their reported relationship with school attainment. (Bruner, 1972).     

Jamaican Deaf Children Interacting with Written Language: Support for Bilingual Instruction?

The interrelationship among language components is the main conceptual framework for this study which examined the written language performance of Jamaican children with severe to profound hearing loss. Twelve subjects aged 15 to 16 years completed text level tasks in writing, reading and sign language. Hearing children aged 13 to 14 years completed writing and reading tasks. Multilevel analyses were undertaken. Differences and parity in performances were observed within and between groups at the word, sentence and text levels. Deaf children's ability to express complex ideas in sign language in the Jamaican education system indicated a need for nontraditional approaches in the teaching of written language. Suggestions are outlined for developing an instructional model to enhance written language using a bilingual approach.     

Associations between teacher–child relationships and children's writing in kindergarten and first grade

When children experience conflict in relationships with their teachers during early education, they perform more poorly on measures of language development and overall academic competence. Whereas children who have close relationships with teachers, often perform better on these measures. A close teacher–child relationship may be important for children learning to write, given the complex and personal nature of writing. Yet, scholars have not examined associations between teacher–child relationship quality and children's early success in writing. The current study examined associations between quality of the teacher–child relationship (defined as teachers’ perceptions of closeness and conflict and children's feelings about teachers) and children's writing quality in kindergarten and first grade. Children's receptive language was also investigated as a moderator of these associations. Results indicated teacher–child conflict was significantly associated with children's writing quality, after accounting for grade level, initial reading status, and type of instruction. Findings of the study have important implications for future research and practice. Attention to the importance of conflict in teacher–child relationships and its’ influence on children's literacy learning and development should be included in future research studies.     

What do children think as they plan their writing?

This study followed from a previous investigation into the impact of guidance given in writing tasks when six hundred eleven year olds completed writing tasks with varying content and structural support. The aim was to find if the support facilitated better writing and if the nature of the support had differing effects. The findings suggested that the support provided in the stimuli did not significantly affect performance. A qualitative study investigated the reasons why the support did not have a significant effect and explored the factors which affected children as they faced a writing task. ‘Think aloud’ strategies were used to encourage them to verbalise their thoughts as they planned a piece of writing from a given stimulus. The children were then interviewed according to a semi‐structured interview schedule and their planning sheets were also considered.