Differential recognition of children's cultural practices in middle primary literacy classrooms

This paper argues that teachers' recognition of children's cultural practices is an important positive step in helping socio‐economically disadvantaged children engage with school literacies. Based on 21 longitudinal case studies of children's literacy development over a 3‐year period, the authors demonstrate that when children's knowledges and practices assembled in home and community spheres are treated as valuable material for school learning, children are more likely to invest in the work of acquiring school literacies. However, they also show that while some children benefit greatly from being allowed to draw on their knowledge of popular culture, sports and the outdoors, other children's interests may be ignored or excluded. Some differences in teachers' valuing of home and community cultures appeared to relate to gender dimensions.     

Family Correlates of False Belief Understanding in Early Childhood: A Meta‐Analysis

This meta‐analysis seeks to integrate findings from 25 years of research on family correlates of young children's false belief understanding (FBU). Using data from 93 studies of 3‐ to 7‐year‐old children, we examined the correlations between FBU and four of the most widely studied family factors: parental socioeconomic status, number of siblings, parental mental‐state talk, and mind‐mindedness. FBU exhibited modest associations with each family variable and these associations held even when individual differences in verbal ability were taken into account. Moderator analyses revealed key child‐related factors (e.g., age, gender) as well as methodological factors that amplified or attenuated the relations between FBU and each family variable. Crucially, available longitudinal data highlight the importance of family factors in the development of FBU.     

Children's perceptions of primary science assessment in England and Wales

This study builds on and contributes to work on assessment of children in primary school, particularly in science. Previous research has examined primary science assessment from different standpoints, but no studies have specifically addressed children's perspectives. This article provides additional insight into issues surrounding children's assessment in primary school and how the assessment of science might develop in England after the science SATs (Standard Assessment Tests) were abolished in 2009. Some research suggests that primary science assessment via SATs is a major reason for the observed decline in children's engagement with science in upper primary and lower secondary school. The analytic focus on engaging children as coresearchers to assist in the process of gathering informed views and interpreting findings from a large sample of children's views enables another contribution. The study, based on a survey of 1000 children in primary and secondary schools in England and Wales, reveals that despite being assessed under two different regimes (high‐stakes national tests in England and moderated teacher assessment in Wales), children's views of science assessment are remarkably consistent. Most appreciate the usefulness of science assessment and value frequent, non‐SATs testing for monitoring/improving science progress. There was a largely negative impact, however, of science assessment on children's well‐being, particularly due to stress. The paper demonstrates that children provide an important perspective on assessment and that including their views can improve policy‐making in relation to primary science assessment.     

Young Children's Self‐Concepts Include Representations of Abstract Traits and the Global Self

There is debate about the abstractness of young children's self‐concepts—specifically, whether they include representations of (a) general traits and abilities and (b) the global self. Four studies (N = 176 children aged 4–7) suggested these representations are indeed part of early self‐concepts. Studies 1 and 2 reexamined prior evidence that young children cannot represent traits and abilities. The results suggested that children's seemingly immature judgments in previous studies were due to peculiarities of the task context not the inadequacy of children's self‐concepts. Similarly, Studies 3 and 4 revealed that, contrary to claims of immaturity in reasoning about the global self, young children update their global self‐evaluations in flexible, context‐sensitive ways. This evidence suggests continuity in the structure of self‐concepts across childhood.     

EFFECTS OF TEACHER–CHILD INTERACTION TRAINING (TCIT) ON TEACHER RATINGS OF BEHAVIOR CHANGE

Problem behaviors in preschool‐aged children negatively affect teacher‐child relationships and children's skill development. In this clinical replication of an initial study, we implemented Teacher–Child Interaction Training (TCIT), a teacher‐delivered, universal intervention designed for early childhood settings. The initial study evaluated the TCIT program in a sample of 4‐ to 5‐year‐old children, whereas the current study focused on 2‐ to 3‐year‐old children. Teacher ratings of children's behavior indicated a significant main effect for time on children's protective factor scores, but not on behavioral concerns. However, for children whose ratings fell in the below‐average range at baseline, significant large effect sizes were obtained for changes over time for both protective factors and behavioral concerns. Higher levels of teacher skill change were significantly associated with overall higher protective factor scores, as well as lower behavioral concern scores for children when baseline levels of behavioral concerns were high. Results provide further support for the effectiveness of TCIT as a universal intervention designed to improve children's behaviors through targeted improvements in teachers’ relationship‐building skills and classroom management strategies.     

Visions for literacy: parents’ aspirations for reading in children with Down syndrome

Although children with Down syndrome (DS) can learn to read, few studies have explored parental perspectives on the reading development of this group of children. This article, written by Leila Ricci and Anna Osipova, from California State University, explores visions and expectations regarding reading held by parents of children with Down syndrome in the US. Parents of 50 children with DS (aged three to 13 years) completed a survey about their children's interest in reading and responded to open‐ended questions inquiring about their views on their children's reading development. A majority of parents in this study described their children's positive attitude toward reading, stated their reading‐related goals for their children, defined their children's relative strengths in reading, and shared strategies used in the home to promote literacy in this population. Parents pay close attention to and have high expectations for their children's reading achievement, and thereby would benefit from partnerships with informed educators willing and capable of teaching reading to children with DS.     

LATENCY‐AGED CHILDREN'S VIEWS OF AGING

This study investigated the contents of children's attitudes toward the elderly and compared these attitudes with the children's attitudes toward young people.

The Children's Views on Aging (CVOA) questionnaire was administered to 256 latency‐aged (8‐10 year‐old) children. The children were white and black, male and female, and came from both rural and urban backgrounds.

The children's responses to the CVOA were analyzed quantitatively using chi‐square and t‐tests. The results showed that children had some negative perceptions of the aging process, but positive views of the older person. Comparison of the children's attitudes toward older people and young people showed that the children's attitudes were more negative toward older people in the potency dimension of attitude but more positive toward older people in the evaluative dimension. The findings suggest that children's attitudes toward aging are complex and diverse. Important implications for educational practice are discussed.

This study formed part of Ronald Marks’ doctoral dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the School of Social Work, University of Pittsburgh, 1980.     

Teacher power and children's loneliness: Moderating effects of teacher‐child relationships and peer relationships

Teacher‐child relationships and peer relationships are important predictors of children's loneliness. However, few studies have examined the potential and adverse relationship between teacher power and children's loneliness. Thus, we explicitly explored whether teacher power is related to children's loneliness and examined the potential moderating roles of interpersonal relationships (i.e., teacher‐child relationships and peer relationships) in 888 Chinese children. Moreover, this study measured teacher power with children's figure drawings. The results showed that teacher power was significantly and positively related to children's loneliness, and both teacher‐child relationships and peer relationships moderated the link between the two variables. Specifically, the adverse correlation between teacher power and children's loneliness was not significant among children with high‐quality teacher‐child relationships. Similarly, the negative effect of teacher power on children's loneliness was not found among children with a high level of peer relationships. Therefore, our results confirmed that the adverse relationship between teacher power and children's loneliness, and the protective roles of high quality of teacher‐child relationships and high levels of peer relationships in this relationship. Potential implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Does the PMSP connectionist model of single word reading learn to read in the same way as a child?

The Plaut, McClelland, Seidenberg and Patterson (1996) connectionist model of reading was evaluated at two points early in its training against reading data collected from British children on two occasions during their first year of literacy instruction. First, the network's non‐word reading was poor relative to word reading when compared with the children. Second, the network made more non‐lexical than lexical errors, the opposite pattern to the children. Three adaptations were made to the training of the network to bring it closer to the learning environment of a child: an incremental training regime was adopted; the network was trained on grapheme–phoneme correspondences; and a training corpus based on words found in children's early reading materials was used. The modifications caused a sharp improvement in non‐word reading, relative to word reading, resulting in a near perfect match to the children's data on this measure. The modified network, however, continued to make predominantly non‐lexical errors, although evidence from a small‐scale implementation of the full triangle framework suggests that this limitation stems from the lack of a semantic pathway. Taken together, these results suggest that, when properly trained, connectionist models of word reading can offer insights into key aspects of reading development in children.     

INFORMANT EFFECTS ON BEHAVIORAL AND ACADEMIC ASSOCIATIONS: A LATENT VARIABLE LONGITUDINAL EXAMINATION

Discrepancies among informants’ ratings of a given child's behavior complicate the study of linkages between child behavior and academic achievement. In the current study, we examined the potential moderating effect of informant type on associations between behavior and two types of achievement in a longitudinal growth model that captured children's development from 54 months of age through fifth grade. Latent internalizing and externalizing behavioral constructs, as separately measured by mothers and teachers, were modeled as time‐varying predictors of achievements to capture changes that occur as children progress through different developmental stages. Behavioral ratings obtained by both informants explained largely equivalent levels of reading achievement variance, and teachers’ ratings of child behavior explained more variance in analytic type achievements than did those of mothers.     

Playing Games and Learning Mathematics: The results of two intervention studies

This article presents the findings of two studies that were designed to improve young children's number knowledge through the use of mathematical games. The first study, with 5‐year‐old children (N = 55), involved parents coming into the classroom to play games with small groups of children. The second study, with 7‐year‐old children (N = 128), explored several ways of incorporating games into school mathematics programmes, including parents playing games with the children. Individual task‐based interviews were used to gather data on the children's number knowledge, and detailed observations were made of selected children's experiences during their normal mathematics lessons and while they were playing the mathematical games. The results showed that games appeared to be most effective as a way of enhancing children's learning when a sensitive adult was available to support and extend the children's learning as they played. The factors that appear to be important when involving parents in games sessions at school are discussed.     

Enduring Association Between Parenting and Cortisol: A Meta‐analysis

Warm caregiving is associated with concurrent hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical (HPA) axis function, although the persistence of this association over time is less established. Using longitudinal and intervention studies, this meta‐analysis examined the enduring association of parental warmth (measured when children were ages < 1 through 15 years) with basal cortisol, reactivity and recovery (measured when children were ages < 1 through 25 years; k = 38; N = 6,608). These studies demonstrate no overall associations between parenting and children's HPA axis; instead there are small associations that vary based on moderators such as socioeconomic status, developmental stage, study design and stressor type, though many moderators are confounded. This first wave of studies indicates that the enduring association between parenting and cortisol is small and only understood in the context of other factors, and directly informs four sets of methodological and theoretical recommendations to strengthen this literature.     

Creating contexts for talk: the influence of school-based creative arts projects on children's language

This article draws on data from two recent research studies of children's language and literacy development in the context of their work in school‐based creative arts projects. Using observations of children (ages 3 to 11) and teachers at work, the article examines the ways in which the activities in such projects open up opportunities for children to talk with each other and with adults by generating a ‘workshop’ atmosphere. Children's authentic and wide‐ranging talk in creative arts projects encompasses personal, social, imaginary and real‐world themes which, we argue, is rare in other curriculum contexts. As schools are encouraged to develop ‘creative partnerships’ with artists and arts organisations, the article highlights the role of the teacher in observing and promoting these experiences as occasions for children's language development.     

How Can Genetically Informed Research Help Inform the Next Generation of Interparental and Parenting Interventions?

There is robust evidence that the interparental relationship and parenting behaviors each have a significant influence on children's risk for emotional (internalizing) and behavioral (externalizing) problems. Indeed, interventions targeting the interparental relationship and parenting processes show significant intervention‐related reductions in child internalizing and externalizing problems. However, most evidence‐based parenting‐ and couple‐focused interventions result in small to medium effects on children's emotional and behavior problems. It is proposed that there is opportunity to improve upon these interventions through incorporation of knowledge from quantitative genetic research. Three core recommendations are provided for practitioners engaging in intervention work with children and families. These recommendations are contextualized relative to what quantitative genetic studies can tell us about the role of the interparental relationship and parenting behaviors on child outcomes.     

Evidence for General and Domain‐Specific Elements of Teacher–Child Interactions: Associations With Preschool Children's Development

This study evaluates a model for considering domain‐general and domain‐specific associations between teacher–child interactions and children's development, using a bifactor analytic strategy. Among a sample of 325 early childhood classrooms there was evidence for both general elements of teacher–child interaction (responsive teaching) and domain‐specific elements related to positive management and routines and cognitive facilitation. Among a diverse population of 4‐year‐old children (n = 1,407) responsive teaching was modestly associated with development across social and cognitive domains, whereas positive management and routines was modestly associated with increases in inhibitory control and cognitive facilitation was associated with gains in early language and literacy skills. The conceptual and methodological contributions and challenges of this approach are discussed.     

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.     

Families’ social backgrounds matter: Socio‐economic factors,home learning and young children's language,literacy and social outcomes

Parental support with children's learning is considered to be one pathway through which socio‐economic factors influence child competencies. Utilising a national longitudinal sample from the Millennium Cohort Study, this study examined the relationship between home learning and parents’ socio‐economic status and their impact on young children's language/literacy and socio‐emotional competence. The findings consistently showed that, irrespective of socio‐economic status, parents engaged with various learning activities (except reading) roughly equally. The socio‐economic factors examined in this study, i.e., family income and maternal educational qualifications, were found to have a stronger effect on children's language/literacy than on social‐emotional competence. Socio‐economic disadvantage, lack of maternal educational qualifications in particular, remained powerful in influencing competencies in children aged three and at the start of primary school. For children in the first decade of this century in England, these findings have equity implications, especially as the socio‐economic gap in our society widens.     

Understanding Young Children's Three‐Dimensional Creative Potential in Art Making

This article explores aspects of young children's three‐dimensional development in art making. Understanding young children's three‐dimensional awareness and development is often a neglected area of early childhood educators' education and practice and often children's creative potential is not fully realised. The present article is based on a small scale qualitative study which focused on understanding 5–6 year‐olds' representational intentions in three‐dimensional artworks, understanding of visual/design concepts and expressive use of media (scrap paper and mod roc). The findings of the study suggest that young children are able to create satisfying three‐dimensional representations giving emphasis on forms, uprightness, balance, movement and modeling of multiple sides.     

Predictors for Mathematics Achievement? Evidence From a Longitudinal Study

Numerical processing has been extensively studied by examining the performance on basic number processing tasks, such as number priming, number comparison, and number line estimation. These tasks assess the innate “number sense,” which is assumed to be the breeding ground for later mathematics development. Indeed, several studies have associated children's performance in these tasks with individual differences in mathematical achievement. To date, however, most of these studies have cross‐sectional designs. Moreover, the few longitudinal studies either use complex tasks (e.g., story problems) or investigate only one of these basic number processing tasks at a time. In this study, we examine the association between the performance of children on several basic number processing tasks and their individual math achievement scores on a curriculum‐based test measured 1 year later. Regression analyses showed that most of the variance in children's math achievement was predicted by nonsymbolic number line estimation performance (i.e., estimating large quantities of dots) and, to a lesser extent, the speed of comparing symbolic numbers. This knowledge about the predictive value of the performance of 5‐ to 7‐year‐olds on these markers of number processing can help with the early identification of at‐risk children. In addition, this information can guide appropriate educational interventions.