Mothers’ Job Loss and Their Sensitivity to Young Children’s Development

As the economy diversifies and stratifies, more mothers of young children experience job instability. To advance understanding of the implications of this trend, this study examines the role of job instability in maternal sensitivity, an important component of child development, during their children’s first 3 years of life. Structural equation models with longitudinal multimethod data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (n = 1,211; 1991–1994) revealed that mothers’ involuntary job loss, but not other job transitions, was negatively associated with sensitivity. This association was most pronounced among mothers with less education. Mediation analyses found that the association was explained by changes in family income and maternal depression, pointing to policy-relevant mechanisms for reducing inequalities among children.     

Review and Discussion of Children’s Conceptions of Computers

Today’s children grow up surrounded by computers. They observe them, interact with them and, as a consequence, start forming conceptions of how they work and what they can do. Any constructivist approach to learning requires that we gain an understanding of such preconceived ideas and beliefs in order to use computers as learning tools in an effective and informed manner. In this paper, we present five such conceptions that children reportedly form about computers, based on an interdisciplinary literature review. We then evaluate how persistent these conceptions appear to be over time and in light of new technological developments. Finally, we discuss the relevance and implications of our findings for education in the contexts of conceptual pluralism and conceptual categorisation.     

Korean Immigrant Mothers’ Praise and Encouragement,Acculturation, and Their Children’s Socioemotional and Behavioral Difficulties

Objective. This study examined associations among Korean immigrant mothers’ use of praise and encouragement, their acculturation, their children’s socioemotional and behavioral difficulties, and the moderating role of child gender and age. Design. One hundred and twenty Korean immigrant mothers in the United States and their preschool children participated. Maternal praise and encouragement were observed during free-play interactions. Mothers reported their acculturation level, and teachers reported on children’s difficulties. Results. Mothers used process praise most frequently. Higher maternal American acculturation was associated with more use of person and other praise. Higher Korean acculturation was associated with greater use of person praise among younger children, but less use of person praise among older children. Mothers higher in American acculturation used more encouragement with older children only. Maternal encouragement was associated with fewer child difficulties. Conclusion. Korean mothers’ acculturation impacted their use of praise and encouragement, and maternal encouragement may be important for decreasing children’s difficulties.     

Chronic Absenteeism and Its Effects on Students’ Academic and Socioemotional Outcomes

Recent policy dialogue suggests that chronic absenteeism is not only underdocumented, but is also detrimental to the success of students as early as kindergarten. That said, almost no empirical research has examined the effects of chronic absenteeism on student outcomes. This study addresses this underresearched issue in more depth. Using a nationally representative dataset of kindergarten students from the 2010–2011 school year, this study evaluates the effect of chronic absenteeism on both achievement and socioemotional outcomes. The findings suggest that chronic absenteeism reduces math and reading achievement outcomes, reduces educational engagement, and decreases social engagement. Hence, this study offers new evidence on how an undermeasured aspect of missing school impedes students’ attainment. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Raising a Difficult Child: Interplay Among Children’s Negative Emotionality Traits,Maternal Parenting,and Children’s Cognitive Development

Research Findings: The present study examined (a) whether children’s negative emotionality traits (anger proneness and unsoothability) interactively predict mothers’ authoritarian parenting (AP) and (b) whether children’s negative emotionality moderates the associations between AP and children’s performance on a spatial cognitive task. Eighty mother–child dyads were recruited from Seoul, Korea (children’s age = 45–66 months). The findings were as follows. First, when children were prone to anger and were simultaneously difficult to soothe, mothers were inclined to show more AP. However, when children were relatively low in either of the traits, such as when children were difficult to soothe but not prone to anger, higher levels of unsoothability were associated with less AP. Second, depending on the degree of children’s anger proneness, the associations between children’s spatial intelligence and AP varied. Among children with higher levels of anger proneness, less AP was associated with lower performance on a spatial cognitive task, whereas the opposite pattern was observed among children with lower anger proneness. Practice or Policy: This study implies that the configurations of temperamental traits and the levels of parental control need to be considered in designing teacher and parent education programs, probably in relation to the cultural context.     

Children’s Emotions in Design-Based Learning: a Systematic Review

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Design-based learning (DBL) is gaining increasing acceptance as a motivating and practical approach that can be used to prepare young people for the...     

Relationship between Cognitive Style and Teachers’ Perceptions of Young Children’s Academic Competence

The study investigated the significance of matching cognitive style of first- and third-grade students to their teachers. The Articulation of the Body-Concept Scale was administered as a measure of cognitive style to 20 first- and 20 third-grade female teachers and a sample (480) of six boys and six girls for each teacher. Teachers ranked their students according to their judgment of the students’ academic competence. Discrepancy scores were obtained based on the degree to which teachers differed in ranking their students in comparison to rankings on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills. A repeated measures analysis of variance indicated statistically significant main effects for grade level and a statistically significant interaction among the cognitive styles of teachers in ranking their matched and mismatched students according to sex in relation to the students’ academic achievement scores.     

The Relation Between Classroom Age Composition and Children’s Language and Behavioral Outcomes: Examining Peer Effects

Grouping children of different ages in the same preschool classroom (i.e., mixed age) is widespread, but the evidence supporting this practice is mixed. A factor that may play a role in the relation between classroom age composition and child outcomes is peer skill. This study used a sample of 6,338 preschoolers (ages 3–5) to examine the influence of both classroom age composition and peer skill on children’s behavioral and language outcomes. Results supported the growing literature indicating preschoolers’ skills are higher when peer skill is higher, but differences related to classroom age composition were not found. These findings further support the view that peer skill plays an important role in preschool children’s outcomes.     

Windows into Children’s Thinking: A Guide to Storytelling and Dramatization

Telling and dramatizing stories is an increasingly popular addition to the preschool curriculum, largely due to the attention this activity has received through the writings of Vivian Paley (Bad guys don’t have birthdays: fantasy play at four. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988; The boy who would be a helicopter: the uses of storytelling in the kindergarten. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990; A child’s work: the importance of fantasy play. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2004). While the writings of Paley and others (Cooper, When stories come to school: telling, writing, and performing stories in the early childhood classroom. Teachers & Writers Collaborative, New York, 1993; Engel 1999) focus on the social and cognitive outcomes children experience as a result of storytelling, less has been written about the process of writing and dramatizing stories with young children. This article discusses procedures and considerations that enhance storytelling with preschool children, including effective prompts for encouraging children’s creativity, potential trouble spots such as aggression in stories, and ways that storytelling can enhance home-school relationships.     

Profiles of Parenting for Low-Income Families and Links to Children’s Preschool Outcomes

Parenting is a multidimensional construct that includes practices, attitudes, and emotional capacity. The aims of the study were to examine variation within parenting through a person-centered approach and the extent to which child and family characteristics were associated with profiles of parenting as well as the link between parenting profiles and children’s preacademic skills, language, and behavior outcomes in preschool. This study used data from low-income, ethnically diverse, preschool-aged children (n = 740) and their parents (n = 713) who were participants in a network of high-quality early care and education programs across the United States. Latent profile analyses uncovered four parenting profiles: (1) low enrichment, conflict-oriented, and distressed parent; (2) average enrichment, conflict-oriented, and distressed parent; (3) low to average enrichment, emotionally close, and low distressed parent; and (4) high enrichment, emotionally close, and low distressed parent. Child (age, minority status) and parent (family structure, home language, maternal age, level of education, school/training status, and depressive symptomatology) characteristics were predictive of being in a particular parenting group. Further, parenting profiles were predictive of children’s preschool outcomes. Implications for intervention and programming are discussed.     

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.     

How Does Parental Reading Influence Children’s Reading? A Study of Cognitive Mediation

Cognitive processes underlying a behavioural outcome (like reading ability) and the impact of familial risk (e.g., for dyslexia) have been studied in isolation. We present a novel design, linking the two avenues. How do familial influences impact on children’s cognitive skills, which subsequently underlie reading development? Participants from the Familial Influences on Literacy Abilities (FIOLA) Project included 373 children and their parents. We considered three causal routes from parental reading and children’s putative cognitive endophenotypes to children’s reading. Path analyses showed that half of parental effects on children’s reading bypassed and half operated through children’s cognitive underpinnings. Spousal correlation was small but significant. Findings do not support a strong hypothesis of cognitive endophenotypes with full mediation. Furthermore, we discuss the use of parental skills as a proxy for offspring’s liability. Finally, familial reading difficulties are not fully accounted for by known cognitive skills, which has implications for dyslexia diagnosis.     

Summer’s End and Sad Goodbyes: Children’s Picturebooks About Death and Dying

This article explores children’s picturebooks about death and grieving by considering both psychological and literary aspects. Two questions frame this analysis: How can picturebooks, particularly written for young children, support children’s grief when someone dies? How do the illustrations and text of picture books express and convey the aesthetic and emotional experience of loss? Using both psychological research on children’s grief reactions and literary analysis of picturebooks, this paper reviews picturebooks that have been published on the topic of death from 2001 to 2011 and then closely analyzes three books that span a range of topics and approaches to death. Findings indicate that children’s picturebooks convey important psychological and cultural issues through text and illustrations. Furthermore, understanding some of the psychological and literary features of children’s picturebooks that address death and grieving can help educators to provide support and understanding for children when they experience loss.     

A Review of the Research on Childminding: Understanding Children’s Experiences in Home-Based Childcare Settings

This paper offers a discussion of the literature of an under-developed area of early years research—the exploration of childminding or home-based childcare and the contribution which this form of provision makes for children and families. Despite growing interest in childminding at the policy level and some international research on understanding home-based childcare settings and practices, there remains a relative dearth of studies conceptualising and reviewing the extant literature. This paper addresses this gap by presenting the findings of a comprehensive database search for literature and a review of published international work from 1990 to 2013. It offers a conceptual analysis of the notion of “home-based childcare”, with a focus on understanding caregivers’ practices, and the key issues and debates that characterise the field. The paper argues that home-based childcare not only offers a specialist type of service as family support, especially for vulnerable families, but that it provides a form of pedagogical approach to children’s developmental and educational outcomes that is distinct from any other types of early years care.     

Children’s Cognitive and Behavioral Reactions to an Autonomous Versus Controlled Social Robot Dog

Research Findings: Interactive technology has become ubiquitous in young children’s lives, but little is known about how children incorporate such technologies into their intuitive biological theories. Here we explore how the manner in which technology is introduced to young children impacts their biological reasoning, moral regard, and prosocial behavior toward it. We asked 5- and 7-year-old children to interact with a robot dog that was described either as moving autonomously or as remote controlled. Compared with a controlled robot, the autonomous robot caused children to ascribe higher emotional and physical sentience to the robot, to reference the robot as having desires and physiological states, and to reference moral concerns as applying to the robot. Children who owned a dog at home were more likely to behave prosocially toward the autonomous robot than those who did not. Practice or Policy: Recent work has begun to use robots as learning tools. Our results suggest that the manner in which robots are introduced to young children may differentially impact children’s learning. Presenting robots as autonomous agents may help promote children’s social-emotional development, whereas presenting robots as human controlled may help promote robots as purely cognitive educational tools.     

The Rise in Single-Mother Families and Children’s Cognitive Development: Evidence From Three British Birth Cohorts

This article assessed changes in the association between single motherhood and children’s verbal cognitive ability at age-11 using data from three cohorts of British children, born in 1958 (n = 10,675), 1970 (n = 8,933) and 2000 (n = 9,989), and mediation analysis. Consistent with previous studies, direct effects were small and insignificant. For those born in 1958 and 1970 indirect effects, operating through reduced economic and parental resources, were associated with −.107-SD to −.156-SD lower attainment. Differences between the two cohorts, and by children’s age when parents separated, were insignificant. For the 2000 cohort, effect sizes for children born to single mothers did not change significantly (−.112-SD) but attenuated for children whose parents separated in early childhood (−.076-SD) or while of school age (−.054-SD).     

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 Literature and Education: A Memoir of Dr. Lawrence Sipe

A personal reflection about Dr. Sipe as a teacher and a mentor.     

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.     

Cognitive Stimulation at Home and in Child Care and Children’s Preacademic Skills in Two-Parent Families

This paper used the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (N = 1,258) to examine the influence of hilevels of cognitive stimulation from mothers, fathers, and childcare providers at 24 months and children’s pre-academic skills at 48 and 60 months in two parent families. Results from path analysis showed direct positive effects of fathers’ early cognitive stimulation on early reading and math skills at 48 and 60 months. There were also two moderated effects: The effects of high levels of maternal stimulation at 24 months on early math and reading skills at 48 months were largest for children also receiving high levels of cognitive stimulation from their childcare providers. Implications for including fathers in studies of the home cognitive stimulation and strengthening the parent-childcare connection are discussed.