Parental expectations of children’s higher education participation in Australia

The role of parental expectations in determining children's higher education participation is important in understanding both participation and potential policy responses. Using a nationally representative longitudinal survey of Australian households, providing repeat observations on expectations for individual children, this study extends the literature in several respects. First, it examines the adaptation of parental expectations over a 4-year time frame. Second, it looks at how parental expectations for school children are associated with actual higher education outcomes in the future. Third, the longitudinal aspect of the dataset permits more robust analyses of factors that shape parental expectations. The findings indicate that parental expectations of their children's attendance at university are generally stable across time. Perceptions of children's academic achievement at school are shown to be the key influence in shaping parents' expectations, and behavioural issues at school adversely affect expectations. Australian parents from non-English-speaking backgrounds were more likely to form positive expectations of university participation by their children, consistent with studies from other countries. A more nuanced picture of the formation of expectations for sole-parent mothers is also presented. Positive effects of parental education and children's enrolment in a private school on parents' expectations, over and above any effect on school achievement, highlight these socioeconomic factors as potential causal channels for the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic outcomes.     

Using Bogner and Wiseman’s Model of Ecological Values to measure the impact of an earth education programme on children’s environmental perceptions

Investigating the effects of educational programmes on children’s environmental perceptions has been hampered by the lack of good theoretical models and valid instruments. In the present study, Bogner and Wiseman’s Model of Ecological Values provided a well‐developed theoretical model. A validated instrument based on Bogner’s Environmental Perception (ENV) scale was used to examine the effects of the Sunship Earth programme on the environmental perceptions of fifth and sixth grade students in the US. Paired sample t‐tests showed a statistically significant change toward more pro‐environmental perceptions for all factors described in the model for children who participated in Sunship Earth but not for a control group. Additionally, perceptions were shown to be stable over time for a smaller sample of students.     

Gathering,interpreting, and positioning children’s narratives in environmental education research

Cecilia Caiman and Iann Lundegård’s research highlights that an important goal of education is to equip younger generations with tools for innovation. This specifically applies in the realm of science education, as younger generations will likely require a unique preparation and skillset to tackle the environmental issues they will face in young adulthood and beyond. In their article, the authors position imagination as a tool for innovation and infinite possibility in this realm, and they capture moments of children actively imagining or “blending” their ideas to illustrate their worthiness in the cause of sustainability. In this research, I also realize the value of children’s creative narratives on the path toward building a more collective ethic of environmental care. However, I emphasize that positioning children’s imaginative narratives in an education toward sustainability calls for the study of children’s identities-in-progress, and thus, a rigorous theorization of the context in which these narratives/selves are created. This, in turn, necessitates the use of situated and deep methodological approaches to capture and interpret children’s self-expressions. Through my use of Holland’s figured world concept and an ethnographic case study methodology, this research unpacks narratives similar to those presented in Cecilia and Iann’s research to reveal the complexity of children’s imaginative utterances in a school garden context. I consider the myriad of factors that shape children’s experiences and corresponding expressions to complicate and situate children’s expressions within the larger context of self and care development. Revealing this individualized and layered nature of identity and care development in environmental education research allows for the creation or replication of educational experiences and spaces where innovation and care development can occur.     

Promoting children’s informed assent in research participation

Informed agreement to participate in research is a critical element of ethical practice. When researching with children, opportunities to provide informed agreement are often afforded to adult gatekeepers, yet not necessarily extended to the children involved. This paper reports an approach to engaging with children in research, emphasising strategies to facilitate their informed, and ongoing, assent. As part of a research project seeking children’s perspectives of their local community, researchers developed assent and information forms for children and young people. The aim of these forms was to promote discussion of children’s research rights, including the right to choose whether or not they engaged in the research. Within the broader research project, 130 children aged 4–12 years provided feedback about the forms and discussed how the forms influenced their participation in the research project.     

Media’s moral messages: assessing perceptions of moral content in television programming

This study extends the examination of moral content in the media by exploring moral messages in television programming and viewer characteristics predictive of the ability to perceive such messages. Generalisability analyses confirmed the reliability of the Media’s Moral Messages (MMM) rating form for analysing programme content and the existence of 10 moral themes prevalent in television media. Standard regression analyses yielded evidence indicating viewers’ moral expertise, as measured by the Defining Issues Test (DIT), familiarity with the programme and level of education predicted their ability to perceive moral messages in a television drama popular in the USA at the time of data collection. Identification of patterns in moral content represented in television programming, as well as knowledge of how viewer characteristics relate to their ability to perceive such content, can provide parents and educators with a means for better comprehending messages regarding human interaction to which they or their children are exposed.     

Spinoza’s proposal for a doctrine of children’s education

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to analyze the conceptual connection between the Doctrine of Children’s Education, briefly mentioned in Spinoza’s Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (TIE), and the concept of emendation present at the very center of this Treatise’s title. A close textual exegesis of the opening paragraphs of TIE reveals why such a doctrine cannot be the ascetic renunciation of the content of ordinary life. We shall see instead that a new institution of life shall be possible only through a deep plunge into the understanding of ordinary confused life. A Spinozan Doctrine of Children’s Education shall then be conceived as a pedagogy guided by an error mapping principle, i.e., a pedagogy capable of amending the mistaken beliefs of students through their understanding of the way these are produced as real events in the world. This would be an immanent pedagogy, which could be relevant to any form of contemporary thought that seeks a truly liberating education.     

Adult participation in higher education and the ‘knowledge economy’: a cross-national analysis of patterns of delayed participation in higher education across 15 European countries

‘Delayed participation’ in higher education (HE) is an increasingly important feature of modern HE systems in many countries. Despite this, surprisingly little empirical research has been undertaken seeking to better understand levels of delayed adult participation in HE across Europe. The present article responds to this gap by analysing country-level data on delayed adult participation in HE across 15 European countries and by modelling associations between participation levels and a range of theoretically derived economic, social, demographic and systemic factors. The findings suggest that there is considerably more cross-national variation in levels of adult delayed participation and that prevalent typologies of HE, such as Trow’s, fail to give recognition to the importance of delayed participation. The modelling work finds that social and demographic factors exhibit relatively strong associations with delayed participation in HE. This questions the pre-eminence of economic factors within much of the academic literature, policy discourse and policy activity.     

Religious education,conflict and diversity: an exploration of young children’s perceptions of Islam

This article explores the way pupils in English primary school perceive Islam through discussion of Islam in the media. The research suggests that pupils are aware of Islam as a world religion and of many of the images and popular discourses associated with Islam. The research also suggests that while a minority of pupils expressed explicit racist or prejudiced views about Islam many pupils appeared to perceive Islam and Muslims as ‘foreign’ and ‘alien’. The article questions the effectiveness of an approach to teaching Islam that does not include pupil’s negative preconceptions of religion and which focuses on presenting an idealised or monolithic version of Islam.     

Getting parents involved in children’s play: Qatari parents’ perceptions of and engagement with their children’s play

The study investigates parents’ perceptions of and engagement with their children's play in the context of Qatar. Quantitative data were collected using a questionnaire that was administered to parents of children aged 4–7 years old in Doha. A total sample of 240 parents responded to the questionnaire. Findings indicated that Qatari parents valued the importance of play to their children’s development and learning. In addition, parents showed a moderate level of engagement with their children’s play. The findings also indicated that physical play was the most common type of play in which parents are engaged with their children, followed by discovery play. Moreover, significant correlations were found between parents’ perceptions of children’s play and their engagement with all play types. In addition, significant differences were observed in parents’ perceptions of and engagement with children’s play based on parents' socio-demographic variables. These findings highlight the importance of extending children’s play in all children’s educational levels, and getting parents involved in children’s play activities.     

Distancing strategies in child-mother dyads: effect of mother’s education and children’s sex

European Journal of Psychology of Education - This study on mother–child interactions is in line with Sigel’s theoretical approach to distancing. The current study aimed at analyzing...     

Being mean: children’s gendered perceptions of peer teasing

Recent research suggests that social cognition may play a role in the connections among gendered experiences of teasing within the grade school classroom. Within the framework of social-cognitive developmental theory, this qualitative research study investigates how gender may influence young children’s experiences and perception of teasing within the context of peer relationships. The present study explored the role gender plays in 89 Canadian children’s (4–9 years of age, 39 girls, 50 boys) perceptions of peer teasing through participants’ drawings and accompanying narratives. Results indicate that gender may help shape girls’ and boys’ perceptions of peer teasing in the classroom and suggest the need for educators to build a school culture of kindness, peace, and compassion to enhance children’s social-emotional lives.     

Chinese children’s perceptions of aggression among peers at school

Recent research suggests that children may encounter aggressive behaviour during the transition from preschool to school. Yet, relatively few longitudinal studies have been conducted on children’s perceptions of aggressive behaviour in the transition from preschool to school. This study aims to fill a major gap in the literature by exploring Chinese children’s perceptions and experiences of aggressive behaviour, and their ways of coping with aggression, at three points in time: during the last month at preschool (Time 1), the first three months of Year 1 at school (Time 2) and the last month of Year 1 (Time 3). The present study also examines the role gender plays in 79 Chinese children’s perceptions of aggressive behaviour, as depicted in their drawings and accompanying narratives. The children mainly reported physical and verbal aggression rather than relational aggression. The findings provide robust data for understanding how children cope with aggression at school.     

Development and validation of the sources of parental anxiety in children’s education scale

Parental anxiety in children’s education is closely related to children’s developmental and educational outcomes. The current study reported the development and validation of a self-report instrument to evaluate the Sources of Parental Anxiety in Children’s Education (SPACEs). Qualitative analyses suggested that the construct of parental anxiety in children’s education was multidimensional, representing learning performance anxiety, educational environment anxiety, educational input anxiety, and educational outcome anxiety as four primary sources. The results from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported this four-factor structure comprising 17 items to capture this multidimensional construct. The scale also demonstrated adequate internal consistencies, convergent validity, discriminant validity, criterion-related validity, and test-retest reliability. A series of multi-group tests across age, locality, and children’s grades provided evidence of measurement invariance. Overall, the SPACE scale appear to be a reliable and valid tool to measure educational anxiety in parents in the Chinese context.     

Researching children’s rights in education: sociology of childhood encountering educational theory

This paper aims to explore and develop a theoretical approach for children’s rights research in education formed through an encounter between the sociology of childhood and John Dewey’s educational theory. The interest is mainly methodological, in the sense that the primary ambition of the investigation is to suggest a fruitful and useful theoretical base for formulating research problems and undertaking research in children’s rights in education. The paper argues that, particularly in educational settings, research into children’s rights can and must be attributed to children both as full-status humans in a socio-politically contextual present, and as continually growing and changing, immature and dependent humans. From the theoretical encounter suggested in the paper, the much-used distinction of the child as either ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ can be reconsidered, and another point of departure for the study of children’s rights issues in education can be discerned.     

Developing a critical consciousness of race in place-based environmental education: Franco’s story

Environmental education (EE) has a history of support for critical place-based pedagogy as a means of learning through engagement in space, both cultural and biophysical. In this paper I tell the story of how Franco – a non-white, non-American undergraduate – engaged with local discourses in a watershed-focused EE program in the rural Midwestern US. I examine how the five tenets of critical race theory (CRT) can be used to interpret Franco’s experience, where he encountered multiple instances of racism and xenophobia. I argue that without a critical analysis of race in place-based EE programs, instructors may (a) privilege their own ways of knowing in local settings, (b) rely on ‘grit’ narratives as mechanisms for mediation of racism, and (c) send non-white students home having learned that they cannot effect meaningful change for sustainability. I conclude with recommendations for faculty in predominantly white institutions on how CRT might foster the development of critical consciousness of race in place-based EE programs.     

Free-choice learning suited to women’s participation needs in environmental decision-making processes

United Nations mandates recognize the need to promote the full participation of women in environmental decision-making processes on the basis of gender equality. But, there remains a profound lack of effective women’s participation in some sectors of environmental decision-making. Free-choice environmental learning offers an effective educational process for encouraging and developing such participation. This study outlines the shifts in and possibilities for women in environmental decision-making processes in and beyond Western and Northern contexts, and proposes free-choice learning as a pathway to furthering women’s participation.