Immigrant Families and Children (Re)Develop Identities in a New Context

Resolving conflicting linguistic traditions and struggling with new identities are significant challenges for immigrants to the United States. This case study introduces an immigrant mother from Mexico who renamed her youngest son on his first day of first grade to avoid the widespread stereotypes and academic stagnation experienced by her two older sons. Such (re)naming practices constitute and represent the very precarious social and institutional relationships taking place in schools involving immigrant children. In this case study, there was indication of negative aspects of assimilation processes taking place as the family adapted to a new culture and language. For example, the misconception is still widespread that efforts to learn two languages rather than just one diminish a child’s ability to learn other things, which should be learned. However, research in language acquisition and development, points to bilingualism and multilingualism as resources rather than deficits (Souto-Manning, 2006).     

The Scaffolding of Emergent Literacy Skills in the Home Environment: A Case Study

The ways in which parent-child interactions can encourage the development of emergent literacy skills in young children remains to be fully explored. The present report describes how one parent scaffolded her young child’s emergent writing and letter knowledge in the home. Environmental print provided many rich and meaningful examples for the parent to show that print conveys meaning and is constructed with letters that have names and make sounds. The parent used idiomorphs, a multisensory approach incorporating the tracing of letters and whole body movements, and common household objects to guide the child’s learning of letter names, sounds, and shapes. Emergent writing skills were scaffolded by using directional language and by the child copying environmental print. The strategies and examples that are described may give guidance to parents and teachers on how to provide engaging opportunities for literacy learning in the home environment or in an early educational context.     

Teacher beliefs and approaches to linguistic diversity. Spanish as a second language in the inclusion of immigrant students

This study examines teachers’ beliefs regarding linguistic diversity and their approaches to teaching Spanish as a second language (SSL) in the inclusion of immigrant students whose first language is not Spanish. Grounded in a qualitative study in multicultural schools in Andalusia (Spain), we compared the voices of two groups of teachers: regular teachers and specialist language teachers. Teachers reflected monolingual beliefs -from assimilationist to deficit approaches- and attached great importance to the role that SSL has for immigrant students. Results indicated the need for professional development for teachers to promote multilingualism based on beliefs of language-as-resource or language-as-right.     

Does the use of migrant languages in German primary schools transform language orders? Findings from ethnographic classroom investigations

ABSTRACT

Migration-related multilingualism is a core issue of academic discussion regarding educational inequality in German schools. While existing studies have analysed the discrimination against children’s languages from linguistic minorities in school, this paper focuses on social practices in a primary school that seeks to recognise and value multilingualism. The aim of this article is to investigate the extent to which the inclusion of migration-related multilingualism can transform language orders in school and classroom. For this purpose, we examined linguistic practices on the micro-level of the classroom based on lesson protocols. The observed practices indicate that the inclusion of the children’s languages is meant both as a means of valuing and acknowledging the children’s multilingualism and as part of comprehensive language teaching and learning. The question as to the scope of individual schools for overcoming monolingual ideologies within the structural context of the national educational system and dominant societal discourses remains, however.     

Promoting a Culture of Thinking in the Young Child

Conscious of the interplay between nature and nurture in determining a child’s individuality and success in life, the author embarked a group of teachers in an action research project towards nurturing a culture of thinking in young children. Considering the positive effects of routines in early learning experiences, the research consisted in implementing thinking routines to engage young children’s minds in thinking activities. The study took place in two Reggio-inspired schools where participating teachers documented children’s work as part of their teaching. The documentation was a key element to make children’s thinking visible as they installed the culture and language of thinking in their classrooms. The study found that thinking routines build up positive attitudes about thinking and learning. By re-visiting their documented work children developed metacognitive and critical thinking skills which make them more alert to situations that call for thinking.     

Mothering young children: Child care, stress and social life

This study focuses on mothers’ and young children’s everyday social experience by analyzing their social relationships, social support in child care, mother-child interaction, and mothers’ evaluations of all these aspects. Three hundred and eighty-four mothers with a child aged between I and 3 years, living in a city in Central Italy, were interviewed. A Principal Components Analysis was performed on items concerning mothers’ and children’s social experience and mothers’ evaluations. Four PCA generated factors were regressed on the mother’s and Four PCA generated factors were regressed on the mother’s and child’s characteristics. Results show that, even in a context characterized by social conditions supportive to mothering, there is a comparatively widespread desire for social interaction with other mothers and children. A stress related to intensive mothering was found in a minority of the mothers and was predicted by the mothers’ continuous commitment in child care during the whole day. Results are discussed in relation to the hypothesis that social contacts with other mothers may have a mitigating effect on mothers’ stress. One implication is that early educational services that provide the opportunity for social intercourse among parents can be an important resource for them.     

Korean Immigrant Mothers’ Perspectives: The Meanings of a Korean Heritage Language School for Their Children’s American Early Schooling Experiences

This study examines what a Korean heritage language school means to Korean immigrant families and their children, considering Korean immigrant mothers’ perspectives on American early schooling. As part of an ethnographic research project on Korean-American children’s peer culture in a heritage school, seven mothers, two guardians (grandmothers), and their young children were observed and interviewed during one academic year. The analysis showed that the heritage language school functions as a social and emotional support system, a buffer for reducing the detachment from parents, and a safety net for the Korean-American children’s challenging lives. The Korean immigrant mothers also showed that they felt burdened by different cultural views of their children’s behaviors, and described how their children were often considered problematic. The social and culture barriers caused by their immigrant status profoundly influenced their reasons for sending their children to a Korean heritage language school. This study suggests that teachers’ deep understanding of culturally different perspectives on children’s behaviors, along with systematic social and emotional support, can help these children attain psychological well-being.     

An Easy and Well-Ordered Way to Learn: Schooling at Home in Louisa May Alcott’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Eight Cousins</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Jack and Jill</Emphasis>

Louisa May Alcott’s juvenile fiction is often focused on aspects of children’s lives that were also topics of reform in nineteenth century America. In Jack and Jill and Eight Cousins, Alcott presents an idealized picture of child-centered learning, building on three central principals: (1) Good teachers are sympathetic and understanding of children; (2) Every child needs to be healthy in order to learn; and (3) Children should be allowed to explore their world through self-directed, active learning. The ideal educational environment that she describes has much in common with the theories of John Dewey that would emerge some years later; using Dewey’s writings can give further insight into Alcott’s fiction. In this article, I argue that Alcott sees the world from the perspective of her young characters, and describes it in a way that simultaneously connects to her young readers and gives adults insight into the child’s world.     

The role of parenting self-efficacy in children? social and academic behavior

A latent variable structural model was constructed to test the relations among mothers’ and fathers’ parenting self-efficacy (PSE), their loneliness, and their child’s peer-evaluated social competence, self-evaluated loneliness, teacher-evaluated motivational orientation, and academic skills. In order to do this, first the Self-Efficacy for Parenting Tasks Index (Coleman & Karraker, 2000) was applied to a sample of mothers (n=876) and fathers (n=696) to test the relevance of these parenting task categories to Finnish mothers and fathers. The results of the latent variable structural model indicated a strong relationship between both mothers’ and fathers’ loneliness and their PSE, consisting of Nurturance, Discipline, Recreation, and Participation factors. Moreover, there was a modest relationship between parents’ PSE and their child’s social competence and consequently between social competence and child’s loneliness. The relationship between PSE and child’s academic achievement were mediated via child’s social competence.     

The structural relationships of social support, mother’s psychological status, and maternal sensitivity to attachment security in children with disabilities

The purpose of this study was to explore how social support, mother’s psychological status, and maternal sensitivity affected attachment security in children with disabilities by using the structural equation model (SEM). Subjects were 141 pairs of children with disabilities and theirs mothers. Empirical data was obtained through a series of questionnaires such as marital satisfaction, support from people around, maternal depression, and parenting stress. In addition, maternal sensitivity and attachment security were obtained through a Maternal Behavior Q-set and an Attachment Behavior Q-set. The results were as follows: first, mother’s psychological status was fully mediated by social support and maternal sensitivity. Secondly, mother’s psychological status had a negative effect on maternal sensitivity, while her maternal sensitivity, in turn, had a positive effect on the child’s attachment security. However, maternal sensitivity did not fully mediate between a mother’s psychological status and the child’s attachment security. These structural relationships were not different between children with pervasive developmental disorders and mental retardation. There were also no significant differences in the structural paths according to children’s developmental age.     

Books and Good Stuff: A Strategy for Building School to Home Literacy Connections

Engaging young children in literacy activities at home is one way for families to augment and enrich the home literacy setting and to participate in their child’s education at an early age (St. Pierre et al. in Dev Psychol 41(6): 953–970, 2005). Burgess et al. (Read Res Quart 4(4): 408–426, 2002) suggested that the resources families have at their disposal, the quality of literacy role models provided by parents, and the types of literacy and language activities in which parents and children engage, are all related to young children’s developing literacy and language abilities. Other studies demonstrated that even modest literacy-promoting interventions can significantly enhance a young child’s early literacy environment by increasing the frequency of parent–child book-sharing activities (Weitzman et al. in Pediatrics 113(5):1248–1253, 2004). Dever (J Early Educ Fam Rev 8(4):17–28, 2001) and Dever and Burtis (Early Child Dev Care 172(4):359–370, 2002) emphasize the use of family literacy bags for early childhood development. Developing and sharing take-home literacy bags is an exciting literacy-promoting activity that may be shared with children and families to provide support for emergent literacy. This article explores the development of the BAGS (Books and Good Stuff) take-home literacy kits and provides suggestions for content, construction, implementation, and evaluation. Sixteen current books are reviewed and recommended by theme.     

Defiant Behavior in Two- and Three-Year-Olds: A Vygotskian Approach

Defiant behavior in two- and three-year-olds is a natural expression of a young child’s growing autonomy, and, although frustrating to adults, is a natural phase of a child’s socio-emotional growth. L.S. Vygotsky’s socio-historical theory of the development included a discussion of “crisis” periods, one of which he felt occurred at age three. The crisis that Vygotsky asserted occurred at three is characterized by a group of seven “behaviors”, all of which indicate a struggle with the child’s position in relation to family social structures. This study examined the occurrences and characteristics of defiant behavior in two-and three-year-old children during outdoor play at a child development center, and the existence and context of defiant behaviors the modern childcare setting. Patterns in defiant behaviors during play in different age groups were apparent, and suggested an instrument to facilitate the documentation and analysis of defiant behavior in modern group-care settings.     

Rating of personality of normally-developing and mentally disabled children and the mothers’ beliefs about their child’s development

The purpose of this paper focuses on mothers’ beliefs about their child’s personality and development (stability or change and causal attributions) and how these beliefs can be affected by mothers’ experience (being a mother of a six or of a twelve-year-old child and being a mother of a normally-developing or of a mentally disabled child). The scales were completed by several samples of mothers. The effect of the temporal orientation (retrospective or perspective) was also considered. The results show that the mothers rate their child with an optimistic bias while the mothers of disabled children are less positive than those of the broad-ranging sample. The results are also in accordance with the decrease of positiveness as the child grows. Finally, the optimistic bias differs in function of the temporal orientation for the mothers of normally-developing children and for the mothers of mentally disabled children. The retrospective change is also overestimated with regard to the prospective one in the broad-ranging sample.     

幼儿书面语言学习效果的研究

关于幼儿时期是否能够有效地进行书面语言的学习．当前仍然存在着争论。本研究对广州市20所实验幼儿固进行书面痞言学习的效果与阅读兴趣进行了研究，结果表明，幼儿时期能够进行识字与阅读学习，并且可以取得良好效果。     

Four year old children’s acquisition of print knowledge during electronic storybook reading

The experiment reported here explored the importance of engaging 4-year-old children’s interest in the print itself during storybook reading. We explored the effect of computer animation of the print in order to draw the child’s attention to each word as it was read. We also investigated the influence of illustrating that not all visual displays are readable print on the child’s print knowledge. The measures of interest were print concept knowledge and early reading skill. Results indicated that simply drawing children’s attention to the print during shared reading was insufficient to facilitate children’s learning of print conventions, but this attention to print while hearing stories read did improve children’s letter reading. The child’s active engagement with the print during shared story reading led to further improvements in written language skills, as illustrated by gains in knowledge about print concepts.     

Recasts Used with Preschoolers Learning English as their Second Language

This study examined linguistic recasts provided by 16 early childhood educators to preschool children learning English as a second language (EL2). Recasts are semantic and syntactic revisions of children’s utterances. The educator–child interactions were filmed during book reading and play dough activities with small groups of four children, one of whom was EL2. The EL2 children were rated by their educators as having less well-developed expressive language skills than their unilingual peers. However, despite this finding, educators provided similar rates of recasts to both groups of children. Eight EL2 children with the lowest expressive language skills demonstrated fewer uptakes of their educator’s recasts in comparison to EL2 children with higher expressive language skills. The implications of this study include increasing the rate of recasts and reducing their complexity to provide language-learning opportunities for all preschool children, especially for those learning English as a second language.     

Effects of a Cross-Linguistic Storybook Intervention on the Second Language Development of Two Preschool English Language Learners

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a shared reading experience between parent and child in the child’s home language on the emergent literacy and language acquisition in English of preschool-age English Language Learners. Parents of Spanish-speaking four-year-old Head Start students read storybooks in Spanish with their children concurrently with the use of the English language version of the books in the classroom. A single subject design with multiple baselines across subjects and settings was applied. Observed variables included changes in the frequency of utterances, the Mean Length of Utterance-word, and the frequency of spontaneous or child-initiated utterances in various settings within the Head Start classroom. The results indicated that there might be a relation between the shared reading experience in the home language and the child’s second language acquisition. Additionally, there appeared to be a relation between the behaviors and the settings. Finally, implications of this study were discussed.     

School’s out: a comprehensive follow-up study on parents’ perceptions of their child’s school

This longitudinal study set out to examine the changes that took place in parents’ evaluations of their child’s school in the course of the child’s complete 9-year-long compulsory education. Over the follow-up period, academically educated and vocationally educated mothers and fathers (N = 326) were asked to indicate their degree of satisfaction with aspects of their child’s school every 2 years. It was found that the level of parental satisfaction was fairly high at the start, that the general decreasing trend was gradual rather than abrupt, and that the proportion of dissatisfied parents remained low and stable. A pattern of differences emerged to suggest that the parents’ perceptions were structured by their social-psychological distance from the school as measured by their social positions; for instance, the vocationally educated parents, fathers in particular, displayed less satisfaction than the academically educated ones.     

Family-Centered Intervention for Young Children at-risk for Language and Behavior Problems

This study investigated the effects of a family-centered intervention that involved parents in weekly assessments and daily routine activities for promoting young children’s language and behavior. Forty-one 3–5-year-old children at-risk for language and behavior problems, recruited from three developmental pre-schools, were randomly assigned to a control and an intervention group that received parent–professional support. Analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) were used to examine whether groups differed on post-test scores on the Test of Early Language Development—Third Edition and Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory, using pre-test scores as a covariate. Results showed that children in the intervention group outperformed children in the control group on both tests. The study indicated that family-centered intervention is an effective method for empowering parents to identify and implement concrete solutions to their children’s problems, especially when done as part of a professional collaboration.     

A Family Strengths Approach to Early Language and Literacy Development

Language and literacy skills are an essential element of young children’s development and allow them to interact meaningfully with other people and to develop knowledge in all subject areas. Despite the importance of language and literacy development, however, more than one-third of children in the United States enter school with significant differences in language, early literacy skills, and motivation to learn that place them at considerable risk for developing long-term reading difficulties. The quantity and quality of language interactions children have with their parents and exposure to print in their home environment prior to entering school have an important impact on these individual differences. This paper provides teachers with guidelines and tools for helping families identify and create language and literacy opportunities in their home environment that reflect their unique strengths and routines.