Factor Analysis of High School Variables and Success in University Subjects for the First Semester in the University

A stress management program was evaluated in sixth-grade classes of an urban public and a suburban parochial school. Sample 1, from the urban public school, and Sample 2, from the suburban parochial school, received pre- and posttests. Sample 3, from the suburban parochial school, was divided into pretest-only and posttest-only groups. Six self-esteem and 1 each stress and social-skills children's self-ratings and 1 each teachers' ratings of children's overall stress management and stress measures were used. All 10 measures showed improvement in the Samples 1 and 2 independently. Findings in Sample 2 replicated the positive effects in Sample 1. In both sixth-grade classes, children's stress level (self- and teachers' ratings), children's social skills and self-esteem self-ratings, and teachers' ratings of children's stress management skills improved significantly. Sample 3 posttest-only group scores did not differ significantly from the posttest scores of Sample 1 and 2 children. Rival hypotheses (e.g., history, maturation, testing) appeared implausible. Results support using skills-oriented stress management programs in regular grade school classes.     

Family risks and protective factors: Pathways to Early Head Start toddlers’ social-emotional functioning

Early Head Start children may be more likely to exhibit difficulties with social-emotional functioning due to the high-risk environments in which they live. However, positive parenting may serve as a protective factor against the influence of risk on children's outcomes. The current study examines the effects of contextual and proximal risks on children's social-emotional outcomes and whether these effects are mediated by maternal sensitivity. One-hundred and fourteen low-income, high-risk mother-toddler dyads participated in this longitudinal study designed to examine the relationships between family risk, mothers’ sensitivity, and children's social-emotional functioning in Early Head Start families. Researchers conducted two 2.5-h home visits, approximately six months apart, during which they assessed mothers’ levels of family risk, maternal sensitivity, and their children's social-emotional functioning. A theoretically derived structural equation model was tested to examine the direct paths from family risk variables to children's social-emotional functioning and the indirect paths by way of the mediator variable, maternal sensitivity. Support was found for a model that identified maternal sensitivity as a mediator of the relationship between parenting stress and children's social-emotional functioning. Results have implications for providing services through Early Head Start programs that are aimed at alleviating parenting stress and enhancing maternal sensitivity.     

Middle childhood,poverty, and adjustment: Does social support have an impact?

The present study evaluated 64 children and their primary caregivers who were living in poverty. The children were administered a stress measure, a social support measure, and a measure of self‐esteem. Caregivers completed a stress measure, a measure of child adjustment, and a demographic questionnaire. Social support was not found to moderate the relationship between stress and child outcome. However, social support was found to be one possible mediator of the child's reported stress on their self‐esteem. According to the mediating model, enhancing children's social support may positively influence their self‐esteem. Greater levels of self‐esteem can affect many aspects of children's lives, such as improving school performance and efforts toward achieving goals. Because of the important role that social support can play on children's self‐esteem, social support should be actively promoted through school and community groups and organizations, especially with children from disadvantaged economic situations. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Parental family stress during pregnancy and cognitive functioning in early childhood: The Generation R Study

We investigated whether parental family stress during pregnancy is associated with cognitive functioning in early childhood in a population-based cohort (n = 3139). Family stress was assessed using the Family Assessment Device at the 20th week of pregnancy and was reported by mothers and fathers. Mothers completed the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory, measuring children's verbal cognitive functioning, when children were 18 months and they completed the Parent Report of Children's Abilities, measuring nonverbal cognitive functioning, when children were 2 years old. Maternal prenatal family stress was related to children's low word comprehension and poorer nonverbal cognitive development independent of paternal reports. In a subset of 639 children, maternal prenatal family stress was also associated with observational assessments of poor effortful control at age 37 months. Paternal prenatal family stress was only related to poorer nonverbal cognitive development, independent of the mother. When both parents had high levels of prenatal family stress, children displayed particularly poor nonverbal cognitive development. These findings emphasize the significance of parental prenatal family stress for child developmental outcomes.     

The Teaching/Learning Relationship in the First Years of School: Some Revolutionary Implications of Vygotskya's Theory

During the last twenty years, Vygotsky's theory has increasingly been cited when considering aspects of early education. Most commonly, however, a single concept (the zone of proximal development) has been used to represent the theory, and treated as synonymous with the view that a teacher's job is to scaffold the children's learning. By contrast, in this paper we stress the fact that Vygotsky's theory is one that requires attending to what individuals bring to interactions, what goes on during those interactions, and the cultural contexts (as they have developed over historical time) of the individuals involved. Equally important, we stress that Vygotsky's view of interactions between teachers and children involves the concept of obuchenie, a Russian term meaning both teaching and learning, rather than scaffolded instruction. To take this position seriously involves making dramatic changes in the process of education as typically practiced. For this reason Vygotsky's theory has revolutionary implications, examples of which we discuss in the final section.     

The Origins of Parenting Stress During the Transition to Parenthood: A New Family Model

This paper describes the origins of parenting stress, defined both as tensions in the parent–child relationship and as broader changes in five family domains as men and women make the transition from couple to family life. Despite significant change in their average level of functioning, parents show continuity in their level of adaptation from pregnancy through the first five years of parenthood. Parenting stress emerges from the context of parents' individual and marital adaptation before the child is born. It is possible to identify expectant parents who are at risk for later parenting stress and lower well-being across employment and family domains. Path analyses show that men's and women's prior well-being and their involvement in paid work during pregnancy are associated with higher parenting stress—and lower self-esteem, marital satisfaction, family work satisfaction, and job satisfaction—two years later when their babies are 18months old. Stress in the parent–child relationship at 18 months postpartum compounds preexisting stress in other family domains to reduce well-being in other aspects of family life. Links among parenting stress, parenting quality, and children's adaptation to school lead to suggestions for preventive interventions early in the family life cycle.     

Paths Toward Professionalization

Recent research on children's sport participation motives is examined to provide insight about potential sources of stress in organized youth sports. It is concluded that affiliation, skill development, success and status, excitement, and fitness represent the most important general motive factors for young athletes. A four-stage model of stress is outlined, extant empirical literature on stress in youth sports is briefly reviewed within this framework, and implications of these findings with regard to the stressfulness of athletic competition for children are discussed. It is proposed that future stress research in youth sports examine coach-player and parent-player interactions, the antecedents of competitive trait anxiety, other sources of stress in addition to performance-and success-related demands, and the role of participation motivation as a moderator variable in players' responses to various stressors. The need for research with younger children and participants in individual sports also is addressed.     

Stress,Adaptive Coping,and Life Satisfaction

The authors examined the relationship between stress, adaptive coping, and life satisfaction among college students who reported having a friend or family member with eating disorder symptomatology. A hierarchical regression confirmed the study's hypotheses. Higher stress was linked with less life satisfaction. After stress was controlled, plan coping had a beneficial influence on life satisfaction. College counselors can use these findings when choosing interventions for clients who are close to someone with an eating disorder.     

Maternal work conditions and child development

How do maternal work conditions, such as psychological stress and physical hazards, affect children's development? Combining data from the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Occupational Information Network allows us to shed some light on this question. We employ various techniques including OLS with extensive controls, a value added approach and individual fixed effects in order to address potential endogeneity problems. Our results reveal that mothers’ exposure to work-related hazards negatively affects children's cognitive development and to work-related stress negatively affects children's behavioral development. While maternal time investments play a small but significant role in mediating these negative associations, paternal time investments neither reinforce nor compensate these associations.     

The need-threat analysis: A scoring system for the children's apperception test

The study of childhood stress provides a useful perspective for assessing children's emotional status. Thematic projective techniques, like the Children's Apperception Test (CAT), may be useful in exploring children's perception of stress. For this purpose, a need-threat analysis is recommended to identify those underlying needs and threats that are likely to make a particular event or situation important, and hence potentially stressful, to an individual child. This paper introduces a scoring system for the CAT based on the analysis of thematic data in terms of five need-threat binaries, which serve as scoring categories. Preliminary data on reliability are presented.     

The Relationship of Family Variables to Head Start Children's Preacademic Competence

This study was conducted with a sample of 93 Head Start children and their mothers. It examined the contribution of family variables (i.e., parenting style, home literacy activities, maternal school involvement, and maternal expectations) to children's preacademic competence as defined by four criteria: (a) performance on a standardized achievement battery; (b) teachers' ratings of children's cognitive competence; (c) children's self-ratings of competence; and (d) maternal reports of children's early school adjustment. In exploring these relationships the study controlled for the influence of variables (i.e., child and maternal cognitive variables, child sex, as well as risk due to daily stress) that have been suggested to influence directly, or indirectly, maternal involvement and child competence. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that educational expectations, home literacy variables, and school involvement were predictive of children's competence even after accounting for the effects of maternal education, child IQ, and daily stress. Specifically, maternal educational expectations were predictive of preacademic achievement and teacher-rated competence. Maternal engagement in educational activities at home was predictive of children's self-efficacy beliefs and school adjustment. Maternal school involvement was also predictive of school adjustment.     

Child Behavior Problems,Teacher Executive Functions,and Teacher Stress in Head Start Classrooms

Research Findings: The current article explores the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of child behavior problems and preschool teacher job stress, as well as the possibility that teachers’ executive functions moderate this relationship. Data came from 69 preschool teachers in 31 early childhood classrooms in 4 Head Start centers and were collected using Web-based surveys and Web-based direct assessment tasks. Multilevel models revealed that higher levels of teachers’ perceptions of child behavior problems were associated with higher levels of teacher job stress and that higher teacher executive function skills were related to lower job stress. However, findings did not yield evidence for teacher executive functions as a statistical moderator. Practice or Policy: Many early childhood teachers do not receive sufficient training for handling children's challenging behaviors. Child behavior problems increase a teacher's workload and consequently may contribute to feelings of stress. However, teachers’ executive function abilities may enable them to use effective, cognitive-based behavior management and instructional strategies during interactions with students, which may reduce stress. Providing teachers with training on managing challenging behaviors and enhancing executive functions may reduce their stress and facilitate their use of effective classroom practices, which is important for children's school readiness skills and teachers’ health.     

Metrical stress sensitivity in young children and its relationship to phonological awareness and reading

This paper reports two studies of young English‐speaking children's ability to cope with changes to the metrical stress pattern of spoken words and the relationship between this ability, phonological awareness and early reading development. Initially, 39 children aged 4 and 5 years were assessed on their ability to identify mispronounced words, including words that had their metrical stress pattern reversed. The children were significantly worse at identifying words that had their metrical stress pattern reversed than words that were mispronounced in other ways. The second study was a cross‐sectional comparison of 31 5, 6 and 7‐year‐old children's performance on the metrical stress reversal condition of the mispronunciation task. Measures of the children's written language skills and phonological awareness were also taken. The 7‐year‐old children outperformed the 5‐year‐olds on the metrical stress task. Performance on this measure was associated with most of the measures of phonological awareness and literacy, and was associated with rhyme awareness and spelling ability after age had been taken into account. Moreover, metrical stress sensitivity could account for variance in spelling ability after phonological awareness had been taken into account, and after vocabulary had been taken into account. This suggests that stress sensitivity may influence spelling development in a way that is independent of its contribution to phonological representations.     

Understanding the mediating role of corporal punishment in the association between maternal stress,efficacy, co-parenting and children's adjustment difficulties among Arab mothers

This study, guided by the Family Systems Theory, examines the direct effect of maternal use of corporal punishment on children's adjustment difficulties. Also, it explores whether corporal punishment serves as a mediating factor in the relationship between several maternal characteristics, marital relationships, and children's adjustment difficulties. A total of 2,447 Arab mothers completed anonymous, structured, self-report questionnaires. The use of corporal punishment was generally strongly supported by the Arab mothers in our sample. A greater likelihood of using corporal punishment was found among mothers of boys rather than girls, among mothers with lower perceived self-efficacy to discipline children, and among mothers with a lower perception of their husbands’ participation in child-related labor. In addition, the higher a mother's reports on disagreement with her husband about discipline methods and the stronger her level of maternal stress, the more likely she was to use corporal punishment. Corporal punishment also mediated the association between the above mentioned factors and child adjustment difficulties. Furthermore, a husband's emotional support and family socioeconomic status were directly associated to children's adjustment difficulties. The results of the current study emphasize the need to observe children's development within the context of their family systems and to consider the mutual influences of different subsystems such as marital relationships and mother–child interactions. Prevention and intervention programs should raise parents’ awareness concerning the harmful effects of corporal punishment and take into account the impact of dynamic transactions of parental conflicts and disagreements regarding discipline methods on child outcomes.     

Towards a model for the determinants of occupational stress among schoolteachers

The determinants of stress in teaching were investigated in a context which allowed many of the characteristics of an educational system to be incorporated in the design. Using a specially developed self-report instrument, 545 secondary schoolteachers in Malta reported the perceived levels of stressfulness of 35 items covering various aspects of the teacher’s work environment. One-third of the respondents rated being a teacher as either very stressful or extremely stressful. A principal components analysis of the data on the 35 sources of stress yielded a four-factor structure described in terms of ‘pupil misbehaviour’, ‘poor working conditions’, ‘poor staff relations’ and ‘time pressures’. Repeated measures ANOVA of the factor scores revealed a number of significant two-way and three-way interactions involving the demographic variables of sex, age, type of teaching post, type of school selectivity, type of single-sex school, size of school, and type of curriculum subject/s taught.     

Low Income African American Mothers' Parenting Stress and Instructional Strategies to Promote Peer Relationships in Preschool Children

This study investigated mothers' stress as a predictor of her instructional strategies for promoting peer relationships in preschool children. Forty-two low income African American mothers responded to structured interviews on the teaching strategies they frequently used to facilitate peer interactions of their two to three- and-a-half-year-old children. Mothers' stress was measured by The Parenting Stress Index-Short Form. Using regression analysis, three stress predictors of mothers' strategies to promote peer relationships were examined: parental distress, difficult child, and parent-child dysfunctional interactions. The three predictors of stress had a differential impact on mothers' instructional strategies. As stress increased: (a) when teaching their own children, mothers more frequently used strategies that reduced antisocial behaviors and less frequently used the strategies that promoted pro-social behaviors towards peers; (b) when teaching their children's peers, mothers less frequently used strategies that would directly benefit these children. Educational implications of these findings for stressed parents, professionals who work with stressed parents, as well as those professionals who teach parent educators are examined.     

Home environments and young Latino children's school readiness

This exploratory study examined the relations among characteristics of children's home environments and two school readiness skills: their oral language and social functioning. Low SES Latino mothers of 122 (65 girls; 57 boys) preschoolers (39–49 months (M = 45.00; S.D. = 5.40) completed questionnaires about their family demography, their home environments, and their perceived parenting stress. Preschool teachers rated children's social functioning, and children were administered the PPVT-R (or the TVIP). Results of path analyses showed that when controlling for children's age and factors that potentially influence children's opportunities for learning, the relation between parents’ literacy involvement and children's PPVT-R/TVIP scores and social functioning was mediated by children's interest in literacy. In addition, mothers’ perceived parenting stress was directly associated with children's PPVT-R/TVIP scores and social functioning. The findings highlight within-group variations in the home literacy environments of low SES Latino families.     

Latino immigrant parents’ financial stress,depression, and academic involvement predicting child academic success

The current study examines Mexican‐ heritage immigrant parents’ financial stress, English language fluency, and depressive symptoms as risk factors for parental academic involvement and child academic outcomes. Participants were 68 Latino immigrant (from Mexico) third and fourth graders and their parents. Results from a structural equation model analysis indicated that Latino parents who reported greater financial stress also reported higher levels of depressive symptoms; this, in turn, was related to lower parent‐reported levels of engagement in the monitoring and transmission of implicit and explicit valuing of academics. Parental monitoring of academics was positively associated with children's success in mathematics and transmission of implicit and explicit valuing of academics was positively associated with children's success in language arts. The current study extends support for the Family Economic Stress Model by demonstrating connections between parental stress, emotional well‐being, and child academic outcomes, through parental involvement in children's academics in a Latino‐heritage sample.     

Design for assessment of dissection in anatomy laboratory based on group identification of structures and peer evaluation

Dissection is a unique multisensory educational experience and is essential to learning the anatomical construction of the human and animal bodies. This study aims to introduce a specialized design for the assessment of dissection and to discuss the assessment's attributes. The design was a product of the “assessment drives learning” concept and was developed to motivate students to dissect. Students were awarded “dissection points” based on prior group dissection and identification of structures. Students' perception of the design was examined, and content analysis was performed. The assessment consisted of two parts: the first assigning each student group structures to “pin” on their previously dissected cadavers; the second was a group peer evaluation. The most critical factor for the assessment's success was careful selection of structures assigned to students to pin. The assessment was fit for the purpose, valid, reliable, and had a significant educational impact. Eighty-three percent of students (n = 116) recommended maintaining the assessment design, as they felt it promoted a deep approach to learning as well as teamwork while reducing stress to a minimum. A strong correlation (Spearman's rho = 0.46, P < 0.0001) was present between the high rating of the design and the number of structures learned, as well as, high rating and lower stress level (Spearman's rho = 0.40, P < 0.0001). There was no apparent influence of grades on student perception of the effectiveness of the assessment. This specific design of evaluation could be used as part of anatomy education in veterinary and medical schools.     

Effectiveness of specific factors in community-based intervention for child-witnesses of interparental violence: A randomized trial

A community-based intervention with specific factors for children and parents exposed to interparental violence (IPV) was compared with a control intervention based on non-specific factors. We hypothesized that participation in an intervention with specific factors, focused on IPV, parenting and coping, would be associated with better recovery. IPV exposed children and parents were group randomized over a specific factors- and control intervention. Baseline, posttest and follow-up measurements of 155 parents and children (aged 6–12 years, 55.5% boys) were fitted in a multilevel model. Outcomes were parent and teacher reported children's internalizing and externalizing problems (CBCL, TRF), child self-reported depressive symptoms (CDI) and parent and child reported children's post-traumatic stress symptoms (TSCYC, TSCC). Based on intention-to-treat and completer analyses, children in the specific factors intervention did not show better recovery than children in the control intervention. Children in both interventions decreased significantly in parent-reported children's internalizing and externalizing problems and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Children reported a decrease in their mean level of depressive and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Teachers reported a decrease in internalizing problems, but not in externalizing problems. No association between time since exposure and level and course of symptoms was found. Treatment differentiation was assessed and both programs were significantly different on hypothesized effective factors. Higher treatment adherence in both programs did not result in a larger difference in recovery. IPV exposed children improve over the course and after participating in a community-based child- and parent program, but specific factors in intervention may not carry additional benefits when implemented in community settings.