Effects of parental health shocks on children’s schooling: Evidence from Andhra Pradesh,India

This study explores the inter-generational effects of health shocks using longitudinal data of Young Lives project conducted in the southern state of India, Andhra Pradesh for two cohorts of children (younger and older). It is found that health shocks to poorer parents reduce investments in human capital of children thereby reducing their future earnings, and perpetuating poverty and inequality. There is a temporary delay in primary school enrollment in the case of younger cohort, while schooling attainment is reduced by 0.26 years for older children. This paper further contributes to the literature on important dimensions like role of timing of the shocks and the pathways through which they affect human capital investment, differential effects of paternal and maternal shocks on different cohort groups, ability of the children and quality of schooling in schooling attainment.     

The effect of preschool participation on intellectual and behavioral disorder diagnoses: Evidence from surveys on children’s health

This paper examines the effect of preschool participation on the probability of ever being diagnosed with certain intellectual and behavioral disorders in childhood. To study this relationship, I use two-sample two-stage least squares where I instrument for preschool participation using an indicator for the availability of universal preschool. Using data from the National Survey of Children’s Health and the Current Population Survey October Supplement, I find suggestive evidence that high-quality preschool participation disproportionately benefits children from low-education households. That is, for children from low-education households, I observe that preschool participation reduces the probability of ever having been diagnosed with behavioral or conduct problems, and requiring the use of special therapy. For children from high-education households, however, I observe that preschool participation increases the probability of ever having been diagnosed with behavioral or conduct problems, and requiring the use of special therapy.     

Impact of the 2015 Nepal earthquakes on children’s schooling: focusing on individual children’s enrolment flow

This study examined the impact of the 2015 Nepal earthquakes on children’s schooling by focusing on individual children’s enrolment flow, particularly from public to private schools, which is becoming a worldwide trend in recent years. The results revealed that the total number of attendees at target schools recovered to pre-earthquake levels 2 months after the disaster; however, flow towards private schools was impeded, especially among ECD (early childhood development) children. The earthquake disaster sharply distinguished children who can go to a private school and those who cannot do so. Moreover, it impeded access even to public schools for children in a vulnerable position.     

Contribution of rural roads improvement on children’s school attendance: Evidence in Cambodia

This study used quantitative and qualitative data collected in rural Cambodia after road improvements to investigate whether children living along better-conditioned roads attend basic education school more. The quantitative analysis revealed that the road conditions did not influence children's attendance, while suggesting significant influences of school travel distance as well as household’s ownership of two-wheeled vehicles and its member composition. The qualitative analysis complemented these results by confirming that improved roads motivated households to purchase those vehicles for easing children’s schooling; and household members’ appreciation of education and socioeconomic characteristics influenced their children’s education attainment.     

The negative impact of violence on children’s education and well-being: Evidence from Northern Nigeria

This study provides comprehensive evidence on the negative effects of physical, sexual, and emotional violence on children’s well-being and educational outcomes in Northern Nigeria. In this paper, we analyzed household survey data, conducted surveys with a representative sample of pupils, and carried out interviews and focus groups with stakeholders. We provide some evidence that exposure to physical or emotional violence is negatively associated with social-emotional skills and self-efficacy. Subsequently, we find that children who experience any kind of violence are more likely to be out of school, have reduced learning, and are less likely to feel safe traveling to and from school. Exposure to sexual violence has a pronounced negative relationship with children’s mental health, an increased the likelihood of early marriage, and a lower likelihood of attending school.     

Hannah Arendt and Norwegian Muslim children’s schooling: in pursuit of democratic practices

The aim of this paper is to consider whether Hannah Arendt’s (1996) [Arendt, H. (1958/1998 Arendt, H. (1958/1998). Vita Activa. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago. [Google Scholar]). Vita Activa. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago] concept of ‘public space’ is a potentially useful and creative way of thinking about aspects of Muslim children’s experiences within the context of education. Following a terror attack in 2011, when 77 people were killed, the then Norwegian prime minister stated that ‘our answer to this violence is more openness and more democracy but not naivety’. Accordingly, this paper draws on data so as to put concepts drawn from Arendt to work. In so doing, we indicate possibilities for ‘more openness and more democracy’ where Norwegian children can have Islam as an important element within their lives in ways that avoid the charge of naivety.     

New perspectives on the positioning of parents in children’s bullying at school

This article explores the subject of parents with respect to children’s bullying at school. The overarching claim is that parental agency and positions on children’s bullying at school are produced and made possible by an apparatus of multiple, concurrent forces that provide poor conditions for a constructive partnership between parents and schools in cases of bullying. This research adds to the existing literature in the field by suggesting that the connections between schools, parents and their children’s social behaviour at school must be seen as complexly entangled and involving a range of forces at local, societal and political levels. Furthermore, based on an emergent research design, the article contributes to the discussion of post-qualitative research, drawing upon varied, qualitative empirical material and analytically experimenting with combining Adele Clarke’s idea of situational analysis and Karen Barad’s concepts of intra-action and apparatus.     

Learning from children’s voice in schools: Experiences from Ireland

In Ireland there is progressive legislation on children’s participation in the education system. The Education Act 1998 advocates that school boards should involve students in the school and establish student councils in second-level schools. Since the publication of this legislation progress on realising students’ participation in schools has been slow. In 2006 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that Ireland strengthen its efforts to enable children to express their views in schools and other educational institutions. The National Strategy on Children and Young People’s Participation in Decision-making (2015), the first to be produced internationally, commits to facilitating children and young people’s voice in the development of education policy, the running of schools and in other areas of school policy. This paper presents and discusses the results of qualitative participatory research with children and young people aged between 7 and 17 years, teachers and school principals, and parents, on their attitudes towards and opportunities for participation by students in schools in Ireland. The data reveal that students are keen to participate in school but recognise that their opportunities to do so are inadequate, that teachers understand participation very differently from students, and that parents have little knowledge of their children’s participatory experiences in school. It concludes that effective participation in schools requires policy, practical and cultural change.     

Does schooling affect health behavior? Evidence from the educational expansion in Western Germany

During the postwar period German states pursued policies to increase the share of young Germans obtaining a university entrance diploma (Abitur) by building more academic track schools, but the timing of educational expansion differed between states. This creates exogenous variation in the availability of upper secondary schooling, which allows estimating the causal effect of education on health behaviors. Using the number of academic track schools in a state as an instrumental variable for years of schooling, we investigate the causal effect of schooling on health behavior such as smoking and related outcomes such as obesity. We find large and robust negative effects of education on smoking for women. These effects can mostly be attributed to reductions in starting rates rather than increases in quitting rates. We also find large negative effects of education on smoking for men. However, the precision of these is not robust to sample specification changes and results for men should thus be interpreted with caution. We find no causal effect of education on reduced overweight and obesity.     

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.     

Development and validation of the elder’s spiritual health scale

ABSTRACT

Spiritual health is one of the most important aspects of the elders’ health. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate psychometric properties of a scale for evaluating spiritual health of older adults in Iran. This is a mixed research, consisted of two phases. First, the perception of elder people regarding the spiritual health was explored, using directed content analysis, and the scale items generated based on the results. Second, the content, face and construct validity were determined. Exploratory factor analysis was used for the construct validity. To determine the reliability, Cronbach’s alpha and test-retest were used. Preliminary designed questionnaire included 94 items, which were reduced to 38 following the content and face validity processes. Exploratory factor analysis demonstrated that 20 items loaded on five factors determined about 66% of variance. The total internal consistency of the scale was 0.89. Results of test-retest indicated a Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.85 while intra-class correlation coefficient of scale was 0.92. The ESHS is a short, user-friendly valid and reliable tool which can be used for assessing the spiritual health of older adults.     

Maternal schooling and children’s relative inequalities in developmental outcomes: evidence from the 1947 school leaving age reform in Britain

This paper investigates whether mothers’ participation in post‐compulsory education impacts on children’s relative inequalities across four developmental outcomes. The empirical analysis uses information from children born in 1958 in Britain. Mothers of the 1958 British cohort were affected by the 1947 school leaving age reform, which increased the age of compulsory schooling from 14 to 15 years. We selected the first‐born cohort members whose mothers were born in 1933 and 1934 and whose mothers completed compulsory schooling only. We found that the additional year of maternal schooling was significantly associated with relative improvements in mathematics attainment for their children, but no significant differences for reading or behavioural outcomes. The impact on mathematics was mainly for boys. These results suggest wider dispersion in mathematics attainment between sons whose mothers benefited from the additional year of schooling in 1947 and those whose mothers did not.     

Satisfaction with adult children’s achievements is associated with depression and loneliness in later-life: the mediating roles of children’s support and gratitude

We examined the mediating roles of gratitude and children support in the relationship between satisfaction with adult children’s achievements, and depression/loneliness in a sample of 465 community elders of Ekiti State, Nigeria. The sample includes 294 women and 171 men with mean age 74.18 (SD = 9.42) selected by means of multistage sampling method. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results suggested that satisfaction with adult children’s achievements was negatively associated with depression and loneliness. However, these relationships were found to be successively mediated by children’s support and gratitude. Specifically, gratitude fully mediated the relationship between satisfaction with adult children’s achievements and loneliness while children’s support was a partial mediator. Also, gratitude partially mediated the relationship between satisfaction with adult children’s achievements and depression while children’s support did not. The fit indices for the mediation model achieved the acceptable cuff-off for model fitness, CFI = .95, RMSEA = .042, 90% CI = (.033, .05, SRMR = .05, with 46% and 28% variance in depression and loneliness, respectively. In the management of geriatric depression and loneliness, mental health professionals may assess satisfaction with adult children’s achievements and utilize gratitude interventions for a happy and successful aging.     

Supporting Inferential Thinking in Preschoolers: Effects of Discussion on Children’s Story Comprehension

Research Findings: This study examines the effects of low– and high–cognitive demand discussion on children’s story comprehension and identifies contributions of discussion, initial vocabularies, and parent reading involvement. A total of 70 English learner preschoolers took baseline vocabulary tests in Portuguese and English, were randomly assigned to experimental or control conditions, and were read pairs of books in small groups. In the experimental condition, 1 book per pair was discussed using low–cognitive demand (literal) talk. The other was discussed using high–cognitive demand (inferential) talk. In the control condition, books were read aloud without discussion. All children took story comprehension tests (new literal and inferential questions) following books’ third readings. Findings showed significant effects of discussion on comprehension. Repeated measures analyses indicated significant effects of high-demand discussion on both question types, particularly inferential questions. Regression indicated significant contributions of high-demand discussion beyond English vocabulary and home reading. Practice or Policy: High-demand discussion significantly influences chigldren’s inferential thinking skill, contributes benefits over and above expected impacts of initial vocabulary, and may offer benefits over low-demand talk for literal details. Teachers need not wait to engage young language learners in cognitively challenging discussion.     

Physical education at preschools: practitioners’ and children’s engagements with physical activity and health discourses

This paper focuses on one aspect of a qualitative study concerned with investigating the place and meaning of ‘physical education’ to practitioners and children at three preschools in Scotland. We examine the ways in which the participants engaged with discourses related to physical activity and health in order to construct their subjectivities. Fourteen practitioners and 70 children participated. Research methods employed were observations, interviews with adults, a group drawing and discussion activity with children, and interviews with children. Both the adults’ and children’s talk illustrated the dominance of neoliberal, healthism meanings that position individuals as responsible for their own health. While the children’s talk primarily centred on health as a corporeal notion, the practitioners tended to talk about physical activity and health in both corporeal terms and in relation to the self more holistically. The practitioners also talked about physical activity as a means of regulating children’s behaviour.     

The cultural shaping of parental involvement: theoretical insights from Israeli Jewish parents’ involvement in the primary schooling of their children

This paper presents a theoretical argument regarding the power of school to shape parental involvement in culturally informed ways. The paper emerges out of preliminary fieldwork among Jewish middle-class parents in a town in northern Israel, during which our attention was drawn to the intense activity in and around their children’s transition to primary school. This activity became a lens for the exploration and articulation of a theoretical claim, according to which parental involvement is not just a matter of the fit or lack of fit between the cultural capital imported from home into school, as posited by much of the relevant literature. Rather, the cultural shaping of parental involvement takes place within and through encounters between school and family: by means of the school’s cultivation of ‘proper’ disposition and comportment for parents, the power of emotional community and the recruitment of a key cultural symbol.     

Restrictive and supportive parenting: Effects on children’s school affect and emotional responses

In this project upper primary school students were surveyed about their general liking for school, and reasons for going to school. Their parents were asked to respond on a questionnaire indicating their restrictiveness and also support for their child’s autonomy. Data were collected from 92 middle SES two-parent families and analysed using SmartPLS path modelling. It was found that children of mothers high on autonomy support enjoyed school more, and endorsed cognitive learning reasons for attending. Restrictive parenting (in either mothers or fathers) did not relate significantly to school affect, but was associated with elevated levels of negative emotional symptoms, notably loneliness and unhappiness.