Number Knowledge and Young Children’s Ability to Measure Length

Research Findings: In this research we explore the relationship between young children’s number knowledge and their measurement of length. First, we examined 4- to 5-year-olds’ (kindergartners’) understanding of and preference for using standard or nonstandard units to measure length. Second, we investigated whether the following tasks were related to children’s understanding of using standard (i.e., rulers) and nonstandard (i.e., blocks) units to measure length: (a) counting and written number identification knowledge, (b) symbolic or nonsymbolic number magnitude comparison ability, and (c) approximate number line estimation ability. Third, we examined whether understanding these number tasks predicted understanding how to measure length for both standard and nonstandard units. Our results show that young children prefer to use standard units of measurement when given a choice, and some of these children use a ruler correctly. Our results also show an important relationship between children’s understandings of numbers and measurement. Practice or Policy: Given children’s preference for rulers, introducing both nonstandard and standard units in early learning settings concurrently rather than consecutively is recommended for practice.     

Children’s Ability to Learn Evolutionary Explanations for Biological Adaptation

Research Findings: Evolution by natural selection is often relegated to the high school curriculum on the assumption that younger students cannot grasp its complexity. We sought to test that assumption by teaching children ages 4–12 (n = 96) a selection-based explanation for biological adaptation and comparing their success to that of adults (n = 30). Participants provided explanations before and after a 10-min, analogy-based tutorial illustrating the principles of variation, differential survival, differential reproduction, inheritance, and population change. Although younger children (ages 4–6) showed minimal evidence of learning these principles, older children (ages 7–12) showed robust evidence of doing so, learning them at rates equivalent to adults. Participants of all ages, however, provided nonevolutionary explanations for biological adaptations (i.e., explanations referencing need, growth, and creation) nearly as often at posttest as they did at pretest. Practice or Policy: These results suggest that older elementary school-age children can be taught evolutionary concepts but that learning such concepts does not lead to the automatic replacement of nonevolutionary views of biological adaptation, which must be addressed separately.     

Young Children’s Ability to Produce Valid and Relevant Counter-Arguments

In collaborative problem solving, children produce and evaluate arguments for proposals. We investigated whether 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 192) can produce and evaluate arguments against those arguments (i.e., counter-arguments). In Study 1, each child within a peer dyad was privately given a reason to prefer one over another solution to a task. One child, however, was given further information that would refute the reasoning of their partner. Five-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, identified and produced valid and relevant counter-arguments. In Study 2, 3-year-olds were given discourse training (discourse that contrasted valid and invalid counter-arguments) and then given the same problem-solving tasks. After training, 3-year-olds could also identify and produce valid and relevant counter-arguments. Thus, participating in discourse about reasons facilitates children’s counter-argumentation.     

Examining the Relationship of Children’s Behavior to Emotion Regulation Ability

This study investigated the relationship between children’s ability to regulate emotions and display of appropriate behavior in social settings. A sample of 33 children representing a wide range of social economic status was randomly selected from a Head Start Program and an Early Childhood Development Center in the Midwest. Data were collected using the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC) developed by Shields and Cicchetti (Dev Psychol 33:906–916, 1997, J Clin child Psychol, 27:231–395, 1998). A “Behavior Recording” checklist was developed and used to record appropriate and inappropriate behavior observed during children social interactions. Teacher ratings identified children as generally high emotion regulators. Girls had generally higher scores than boys in emotion regulation ability. A high relationship (r = .76) was also found between emotion regulation and display of appropriate behavior. Results indicate the importance of emotions in relation to a child’s well being and academic achievement. Additionally, these findings suggest a need for parents and early childhood educators to teach children appropriate emotional behavior when confronted with situations that are in conflict with societal norms.     

Training Mispronunciation Correction and Word Meanings Improves Children’s Ability to Learn to Read Words

Previous research has suggested that learning to read irregular words depends upon knowledge of a word’s meaning and the ability to correct imperfect decoding attempts by reference to the known pronunciations of a word. In an experimental training study, 84 children ages 5–7 years were randomly assigned to an intervention or control group. Children in the intervention group participated in a 4-week programme in which they were taught to correct mispronunciations of spoken words as well as being taught the meanings of those words. Children in the control group received no additional teaching. The intervention group made significant gains in their ability to correct mispronunciations and to read and define the taught words; these gains also generalised to a comparable set of untaught control words. Children can be taught to correct errors in the pronunciation of irregular words, and this may produce generalised effects on learning to read.     

Sensorimotor Control of Speech and Children’s Reading Ability

Studies of the role of phonological representations in learning to read have almost exclusively focused on speech perception. In the current study, we examined links between sensorimotor control of speech, reading, and reading-related abilities. We studied two languages, English and Dutch, which vary in the regularity of their spelling-to-sound mappings. There were 236 American and Dutch children, 4 to 8 years old, who performed an altered auditory feedback task in which the first formant of the /?/ vowel was altered. A stronger response to altered feedback for literate relative to preliterate children was observed, and this was particularly the case for the Dutch children. Moreover, the magnitude of the responses was related to precursors of reading in preliterate children and to reading skill in literate children. We propose that these findings could be related to changes in children’s speech production skills that facilitate the integration of orthographic and phonemic information.     

On Developing College Students’ Ability of Reading Comprehension

Reading has become one of the four essential skills in English study,without reading,it is difficult for the students to support independent and self-directed learning.With the arrival of the Information Age,our reading materials gradually change from paper materials to electronic ones.So it becomes more and more important for college students to speed up their reading and develop a good reading habit in order to acquire as much information as possible.     

Maternal Socialization and Kindergarten Children’s Behaviors from Jordanian Mothers’ and Teachers’ Perspectives

This study investigated whether Jordanian mothers’ self-reported parenting practices were associated with their kindergarten children’s prosocial or anti-social behavior based on three parental patterns: nurturance, respect, and power assertion. The participants were 95 mothers with children in the kindergarten level in Jordan. Additionally, 13 teachers of these 95 kindergarten children were also participants. This Parenting Styles Inventory Scale, and the Prosocial and Anti-Social Behavior Rating Scale, developed by Lin (Influences of parenting and teaching styles on young children’s prosocial and anti-social development in Taiwan. Unpublished dissertation, Arizona State University, USA, 1995), were used as instruments. Results indicated that nurturance was the most frequent and preferred parenting pattern of participants. Mothers who are warm and nurturing were more strongly associated with prosocial behavior in their children. An unexpected finding was that mothers with more children were more assertive and strict towards them.     

Devoting Major Efforts to Developing Shanghai’s Open Education

Shanghai,arelatlvely developed region ofChlna In economy andeducatlon;Isstill facing the critical problem ofhuman resources scarcity and low competence oflabourers In order to become a modern metropolis,one of the Internatlonaleconomlc,nnanclal and trade centres.Statistics show thatthe city Is In need of600,000 highquahtled personnel by 2000.As Shanghai Is speeding up the adjustment ofindustrlalstructure,new and high tech Industries as well as knowledge-Intensive Industries areconstantly springing tip,and even In labourlntenslve Industries,the science andtechnology contentsbave also been Increasing,so It’s extremely urgent to trainurgently needed personnel and improve workers’competence universally.The municipal government of Shanghai thlllks highly of open education,andShanghai Education Commission（SEC）also sets It as one of＊thesion important tasks ofShanghai’s educational development. At present,SEC Is drafting the ninth nve、year plan for educational developmentandthe 2010’s target,ofwhich open     

Relating Preschool Quality to Children’s Literacy Development

Preschool classrooms were investigated to determine the extent to which quality is related to children’s literacy development. The study included 24 classrooms of 428 prekindergarten children in a large, urban Midwestern school district. Results suggest that global classroom quality and literacy environment quality are strongly related. Literacy environment quality and children’s literacy abilities are also related. Differences in classroom quality were found to have an impact on children’s literacy scores—the higher the quality, the higher the scores. This article also describes lessons learned from the investigation and provides suggestions for teachers and administrators for improving quality to enhance literacy development.     

A Longitudinal Study of Children’s Developing Knowledge and Reasoning in Science

The growth in science understanding and reasoning of 12 children is being traced through their primary school years. The paper reports findings concerning children’s growing understandings of evaporation, and their changing responses to exploration activities, that show the complexity and coherence of learning pathways. Children’s responses to identical explorations of flight, separated by two years, are used to explore the interactions between conceptual knowledge and scientific reasoning, and the manner in which they change over this time. The paper discusses the particular insights afforded by a longitudinal study design, and some attendant methodological issues.     

Only Familiar Information is a “Curse”: Children’s Ability to Predict What Their Peers Know

The ability to make inferences about what one’s peers know is critical for social interaction and communication. Three experiments (n = 309) examined the curse of knowledge, the tendency to be biased by one’s knowledge when reasoning about others’ knowledge, in children’s estimates of their peers’ knowledge. Four- to 7-year-olds were taught the answers to factual questions and estimated how many peers would know the answers. When children learned familiar answers, they showed a curse of knowledge in their peer estimates. But, when children learned unfamiliar answers to the same questions, they did not show a curse of knowledge. These data shed light on the mechanisms underlying perspective taking, supporting a fluency misattribution account of the curse of knowledge.     

Children’s Use of Testimony to Determine Reality Status

Verbal testimony about reality status is critical but often contradictory. These studies address whom children consider reliable sources of information about reality and how they evaluate conflicting testimony. In Study 1, seventy 4- to 8-year-olds heard an adult or child provide testimony about how to cook food and use toys, and about the reality of unfamiliar entities. Children selected the adult for food and the child for toys. Six- and 8-year-olds also selected the adult regarding reality. In Study 2, ninety 4- to 8-year-olds heard conflicting reality information from children and adults. Six- to 8-year-olds endorsed adult and child claims differentially and stated that adults knew more. By age 6, children favor adult testimony about reality over that of children.     

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     

Preschool as an Arena for Developing Teacher Knowledge Concerning Children’s Language Learning

The most important benefits of international comparisons are the indications that make hidden national characteristics visible and shed new light on the system in each country. From a comparative perspective, this article explores what Swedish and Norwegian preschool teachers emphasise as important to preschool student teachers about preschool as an arena for children’s language learning. The theoretical framework of the study is based on ecological system theories (Bronfenbrenner in The ecology of human development, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1979; Bronfenbrenner in Dev Psychology 22(6):723–742, 1986) and socio-cultural theories concerning language learning (Vygotsky in Thought and language, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1986). The data are produced through interviews with 69 Swedish and 35 Norwegian preschool teachers. The analyses focused on what the preschool teachers stated to be the most important elements to work with concerning children’s language learning, how and why they worked like this, and what rationales may have led to their pedagogy. The two countries seem quite alike in terms of the values embedded in early childhood education and political ideas concerning a rich childhood based on play and democratic ideals. By comparing the two countries, the results reveal differences that can lead to a deeper knowledge of cultural concepts that are often taken for granted, such as pedagogical approaches, and how these create different conditions for children’s preschool language learning.     

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.     

A Quantitative Study of Head Start Children’s Strengths,Families’ Perspectives,and Teachers’ Ratings in the Transition to Kindergarten

This study examined the association between preschool children’s social-interpersonal skills and their transition to school in the beginning months of kindergarten. One hundred and thirty-three preschool children participated in this study. During the spring of the pre-kindergarten year, children’s social-interpersonal skills were assessed as well as rated by teachers. In the follow-up year, parents/guardians and teachers reported on children’s adjustment to kindergarten. The results of this study found no association between parents’/guardians’ and teachers’ reports of children’s adjustment and readiness in kindergarten. Children’s social-interpersonal skills were negatively associated with teachers’ reports of children’s kindergarten readiness difficulties. The findings of this study indicate that children’s early social skills, developed prior to entering kindergarten, are important for children’s readiness for school.