Print exposure across the reading life span

Reading and Writing - Leisure reading is a main contributor to print exposure, which is in turn related to individual differences in reading and language skills. The Author Recognition Test (ART)...     

Artistic creativity across the adult life span: An alternative approach

Conclusion The foregoing discussion attempts to present a preliminary exploration of the relationship between selected aspects of creative activity and life span developmental processes. It proposes some degree of synchronism between the maturational needs of the creative individual and both the forms of expression available to the artist through his/her selected artistic idiom and the predominant art ideology (or ideologies) of his/her cultural milieu. I believe this synchronism is necessary for the maintenance of creative effectiveness during certain definable life transitions, such as the approach to midlife, to which I refer in some detail in the discussion of Wordsworth's Immortality Ode and, more briefly, in the case of other distinguished Romantic and Victorian authors.As this has been an initial exploration, the developmental linkages proposed are, by nature, quite broadly conceived. It will take substantial effort to elaborate these claims, but the effort should be weighed against the opportunity of eventually being able to formulate a coherent, albeit tentative, theoretical model of artistic creativity in the life cycle. For this to be made plausible, other life stages and transitions should be approached in the same comparative manner, investigating the developmental significance of certain established thematic and structural recurrences in the works of, for example, elderly artists. While practically every art historian or biographer mentions the artist's later works in relation to earlier ones, a direct, systematic exploration of the subject has rarely been attempted. The tendency for art critics to overemphasize the formal analysis of isolated works of art and the reluctance of experimental psychologists to develop qualitative methods of creativity assessment have combined so far to arrest the evolution of appropriate paradigms for life span creativity research. It is my hope that this paper will make a modest contribution to changing this situation.     

A process model of writing development across the life span

In this article, we provide an overview of writing development from a product perspective and from a process perspective. Then we discuss modifications of the most influential process model of skilled adult writing to explain beginning and developing writing, including a proposed developmental sequence of the emergence of cognitive processes in writing. Next we report the results of two recent dissertations by the second and third authors supervised by the first author aimed toward contrasting developmental issues: (a) specifying the algorithms or rules of thumb beginning and developing writers may use during on-line planning; and (b) investigating the further development of writing processes among skilled adult writers. In the first study, development was conceptualized as a linear process across age groups. In the second study, development was conceptualized as a horizontal process within skilled adult writers who expanded their expertise. Finally, we consider the developmental constraints and the instructional constraints on writing development and argue for a model of writing development in which endogenous and exogenous process variables interact to determine the outcome of the writing development process.     

Seeking versus receiving help: How children integrate suggestions in memory decisions

The current research examined how seeking versus receiving help affected children's memory and confidence decisions. Baseline performance, when no help was available, was compared to performance when help could be sought (Experiment 1: N = 83, 41 females) or was provided (Experiment 2: N = 84, 44 females) in a sample of predominately White 5-, 7-, and 9-year-olds from Northern California. Data collection occurred from 2018 to 2019. In Experiment 1, 5-year-olds agreed most often with sought-help, whereas 9-year-olds were the only age group reporting lower confidence for sought-help relative to baseline trials. In Experiment 2, agreement and confidence after provided help were similar across age groups. Different developmental patterns when help was sought versus provided underscore the importance of active help-seeking for memory decision-making.     

怎样帮助孩子度过心理困惑期--孩子心理困惑期提前的案例分析

今天我路过四年级语文办公室,四( 2 )班班主任王老师看见,跑出来喊了我一声:“焦校长,请你过来一下。”我跟随他进了办公室,正好看见他班一男生冲着王老师大哭大闹,谁的话都听不进去;为了打破僵局,我将该男生带到我的办公室。先请他坐下,再请他喝水,要求他冷静后再谈;这时他仍然歇斯底里大哭不止,并解下自己的红领巾和中队标志,摔到桌上,好像受了很大委屈,我又给他递上纸巾,让他将肚里所有不愉快都哭出来,随之他又嚎啕大哭起来……半小时过后,他平静了下来,开始向我倾诉:这段时间爸爸、妈妈在家动不动就向他发脾气;同学们都与他过不去、疏远…     

Parental support and homework emotions in Chinese children: mediating roles of homework self-efficacy and emotion regulation strategies

The goal of this study was to evaluate a complex multiple mediation model linking parental support, homework self-efficacy, emotion regulation strategies (i.e. cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), and homework emotions among Chinese children. Participants were 832 fourth and fifth grade students attending public primary schools in urban China. Measures of parental support, homework self-efficacy, emotion regulation strategies, and homework emotions were collected using self-report assessments. Results from multiple mediation analyses demonstrated that parental support indirectly predicted homework emotions through its positive associations with homework self-efficacy and cognitive reappraisal strategy. However, homework self-efficacy and expressive suppression strategy did not mediate the relation between parental support and homework emotions. Results are discussed with regard to the roles of homework self-efficacy and emotion regulation strategies in the links between parental support and children’s homework emotions. Educational implications are also considered.     

Child development in rural China: children left behind by their migrant parents and children of nonmigrant families

Using recent cross-sectional data of rural children aged from 8 to 18 in Hunan Province of China, this article examines psychological, behavioral, and educational outcomes and the psychosocial contexts of these outcomes among children left behind by one or both of their rural-to-urban migrant parents compared to those living in nonmigrant families. The results showed that left-behind children were disadvantaged in health behavior and school engagement but not in perceived satisfaction. The child's psychosocial environment, captured by family socioeconomic status, socializing processes, peer and school support, and psychological traits, were associated with, to varying extent, child developmental outcomes in rural China. These influences largely remain constant for the sampled children regardless of their parents' migrant status.     

Partnership with parents of disabled children in research?

Parent/professional partnership is a key theme in government policy and service delivery for parents of disabled children, yet there is little evidence of such partnerships in research. Drawing on the literature concerning parents' experiences of caring for and raising a child with additional needs; parental involvement and partnerships and the social analysis of disability, this article sets out the rationale for parents' participation in educational research. It proposes a parents' participatory research approach adapted from a disability or emancipatory research paradigm, which the author used when conducting her doctoral research. She describes how there was evidence of parental participation in the study on three levels, through, firstly, the parent/researcher who initiated and co-ordinated the study; secondly, the parents' advisory group, who advised the researcher, completed some analysis and discussed the findings and, thirdly, the parents in the sample, who were offered opportunities to participate, for example, in decisions concerning the content of the data and development of the research methods that were used. Finally, the article discusses to what extent the parents participating in this study were given a voice to express their views, some control over the research process and so were treated as partners in the research process. It concludes that this research study has extended the notion of working in partnership with parents to the field of research and demonstrated that a parents' participatory research approach is possible. It now needs to be developed and replicated in other studies with parents of disabled children.     

Interrogating Discursive Data: How News Media Narratives Assemble Truths About the Teaching Profession

This project provides a framework for interrogating the language often used in media reporting on education, and making those often hidden ideological underpinnings more visible. Explored through this analysis are the language, metaphors, logic, and rhetorical devices used by various news media reporting on educational concerns, and in particular the concerns revolving around teacher quality and teacher preparation, which allow the construction and circulation of specific kinds of knowledge and assert certain kinds of truths. This analysis is guided by the premise that education writ large, which includes the profession of teaching as well as the field of teacher preparation, is charged with helping students, our youngest citizens, develop an understanding of the practices and problems of people-power, self-rule, and shared governance in our democratic society. If education primarily involves preparing students for democratic citizenship, as a long history of scholarship has established (Barber, 2001 Barber, B. (2001). An aristocracy of everyone. In S. J. Goodlad (Ed.), The last best hope: A democracy reader (pp. 11–22). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. [Google Scholar]; Bean &; Apple, 1995 Beane, J. A., &; Apple, M. W. (1995). Democratic schools. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. [Google Scholar]; Beard, 1937 Beard, C. (1937). The unique function of education in American democracy. Washington, DC: National Education Association. [Google Scholar]; Dewey, 1916 Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York, NY: Free Press. [Google Scholar]; Bode, 1937 Bode, B. H. (1937). Democracy as a way of life. New York, NY: Macmillan. [Google Scholar]; Giroux, 1989 Giroux, H. (1989). Schooling for democracy: Critical pedagogy in the modern age. London, England: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Gore, 1993 Gore, J. (1993). The struggle for pedagogies: Critical and feminist discourses as regimes of truth. New York, NY: Routledge. [Google Scholar]; Gutman, 1999 Gutmann, A. (1999). Democratic education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; McLaren, 2001 McLaren, P., &; Farahmandpur, R. (2001). Educational policy and the socialist imagination: Revolutionary citizenship as a pedagogy of resistance. Educational Policy, 15(3), 343–378. https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904801015003002.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Nussbaum, 2010 Nussbaum, M. (2010). Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]), educating citizens to critically examine, analyze, and understand social worlds is essential to democracy.     

How do teachers help children to learn? An analysis of teachers' interventions in computer-based activities

In British schools, educational software is normally used by children working under the supervision of a teacher, who will have set them specific tasks and organize them to work at the computer in pairs or groups. However, those theories of learning which have most influenced research into the design and use of educational software have been essentially concerned with individualized learning, and are insensitive to the nature of teaching and learning as a communicative, culturally-based process. The present paper discusses an alternative theoretical perspective, one derived from the work of Vygotsky. This is used in an analysis of interventions made by teachers in the computer-based activities of their pupils, using observational data gained from video-recordings of primary school classrooms. The usefulness of the theoretical perspective is evaluated, and implications for the development of computer-based activities are discussed.     

Residential special education for children with severely challenging behaviours: the views of parents

Information was collected, through follow-up interviews with parents, on the impact of residential special education on forty-four children who attended a behaviourally-oriented school for children with severe learning disabilities and severely challenging behaviours. Parents noted significant improvements in self care and communication skills and reductions in challenging behaviour during their stay at the school. The majority also noted positive changes since their child left the school, although one in five parents noted a deterioration in challenging behaviour since placement ended. Postiive change at the school was attributed to behavioural programmes, staffing ratios and skills, consistency and intensity. However, since leaving, positive changes were attributed by parents to maturity. Accounts of parents are used to illustrate the variable patterns of overall change seen in the forty-four children.     

Mainstream schooling for the physically handicapped: How can counseling help?

The needs and interests of handicapped children can be properly met with a combination of counseling techniques and with an interplay between actors and agents. The systematic planning and organization of counseling should be based on a partnership from all sectors of the client system. This partnership implies the continuous interaction and collaboration between the different actors and agents involved in the planning, organization and implementation of counseling services. Counseling practices should prove more effective in this area if they can be modelled from, and reflect child-centered education. Further, counseling practices should be built upon an appropriate system of coordination, information and evaluation, which considers the complex and conflicting nature of this largely unstudied aspect of mainstream schooling.