Low-income minority mothers’ and fathers’ reading and children's interest: Longitudinal contributions to children's receptive vocabulary skills

Using data from a diverse sample of low-income African American and Latino mothers, fathers, and their young children who participated in Early Head Start (n = 61), the current study explored the association between parents’ reading quality (i.e. metalingual talk) while reading with their 2-year-old children and their children's receptive vocabulary skills at pre-kindergarten. It further examined whether children's interest in reading mediated this association. There were three main findings. First, most mothers and fathers in our sample read relatively often to their children (a few times a week) and used some metalingual talk; fathers used more than mothers. Second, controlling for parental education, mothers’ and fathers’ early reading quality significantly predicted children's receptive vocabulary skills at pre-kindergarten. Third, children's interest in reading mediated the association between mothers’ and fathers’ reading quality and children's receptive vocabulary scores. These findings have important implications for programs aimed at fostering low-income children's vocabularies and suggest that both mothers and fathers need to be included in programs.     

Low-income Latino mothers’ booksharing styles and children's emergent literacy development

Booksharing is often considered one of the most important activities parents can do to promote young children's early literacy skills. However, there is relatively little research on the style and nature of booksharing in Latino homes. This study examined the relation between maternal booksharing styles and low-income Latino children's subsequent language and literacy development. Eighty Latino Head Start four-year-old children and their mothers were audiotaped while they shared a wordless children's picture book together in their home. Six months later, children's emergent literacy ability was assessed. Results of a cluster analysis identified three types of maternal booksharing styles which had differential predictive power over children's literacy longitudinally. Results are discussed in terms of improving culturally appropriate research, practice and policy for early childhood and family literacy programming designed to meet the needs of young Latino children and their parents.     

Quality of Australian childcare and children's social skills

This study investigated the relationships and interactions between childcare quality (Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale – Revised edition [ECERS‐R]/Early Childhood Environmental Rating Scale – Extension [ECERS‐E]) and children's social skills (SSRS) in different sociodemographic areas within one Australian city. Multiple regression analysis revealed that some subscales of ECERS‐R and ECERS‐E (language–reasoning, programme structure, space and furnishings, parents and staff, literacy, mathematics, science and environment) predicted the level of children's social skills and the frequency of problem behaviour, with positive and negative effects. Interestingly, although total scores for ECERS‐R and ECERS‐E were not significant predictors of social skills scores, interaction between total ECERS‐R and ECERS‐E scores was a significant predictor. With some qualifications the study provides evidence that both the childcare centre's neighbourhood and the quality of childcare provision are related to children's social skills. The interaction between social/emotional and academic aspects of quality suggests that we need to consider synergistic dimensions in quality in order to optimally enhance social skills in children.     

Training mothers in elaborative reminiscing enhances children's autobiographical memory and narrative

This longitudinal intervention assessed children's memory at 2(1/2) years (short-term posttest; N=115) and their memory and narrative at 3(1/2) years (long-term posttest; N=100) as a function of maternal training in elaborative reminiscing when children were 1(1/2) to 2(1/2) years. At both posttests, trained mothers were more elaborative in their reminiscing than untrained mothers. At the long-term posttest, trained mothers were also more repetitive than untrained mothers. Children of trained mothers provided richer memories than children of untrained mothers at both posttests. Children of trained mothers also produced more accurate memories with researchers but only if they had high initial levels of self-awareness. Results are discussed with respect to theory and practice in autobiographical memory development.     

Parent involvement in school and Chinese American children's academic skills

The authors examined the concurrent associations of school-based parent involvement (PI), family sociocultural factors, and children's academic skills in a sample of 258 Chinese American children (5–9 years old) in immigrant families. Parents reported their American and Chinese orientations and family socioeconomic status (SES). Parents and teachers rated parents' school-based involvement, and children's English reading and mathematics calculation skills were assessed with standardized tests. Results of path analysis indicated that, controlling for SES, parents' American orientation was positively associated with their self-reported PI. Although parent- and teacher-reported PI were positively correlated with each other, only teacher-reported PI was positively associated with children's English reading. These findings support the benefits of school-based PI for Chinese immigrant children's English reading achievement. Results also highlight the need to consider differences between teachers' and parents' perceptions of PI in developing culturally sensitive interventions to encourage immigrant parents' school involvement.     

Enhancing children's thinking skills: an instructional model for decision-making under certainty

Modern society is characterized by rapid change, an overload of information, an interrelation between once distinct fields (science, technology and society) and a growing recognition of the importance of personal and social values. In such a dynamic society the teaching of facts becomes less vital while the teaching of thinking skills turns out to be indispensable. Educators have recognized the need for curricula devoted to thinking skills in general and attempts to attain this goal have already been made. However, almost no attention has been given to teaching children the very important and daily used skill of decision-making under certainty. In the present paper we propose a framework for developing school material which cultivates decision-making skills. This framework is a tripartite model which describes (a) the general strategy an ideal decision maker should adopt, (b) the underlying cognitive skills needed for that strategy and (c) the educational objectives for the promotion of each cognitive skill mentioned.Science in a Technological Society, a curriculum developed in the Israeli Science Teaching Center, Center for Curriculum Research and Development, School of Education, Tel-Aviv University.NoteIsraeli Science Teaching Center, Center for Curriculum Research & Development, School of Education,Tel-Aviv University     

Developing Young Thinkers: An intervention aimed to enhance children's thinking skills

It is increasingly popular to ‘teach’ thinking skills in schools. A diverse variety of programmes exist to support practitioners in this task, and some research has been gathered on the effectiveness of individual approaches. However, the difficulties when assessing the development of thinking skills are widely documented. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of teaching thinking skills explicitly to 11/12-year olds by infusing thinking skills into the curriculum (i.e., teaching thinking skills simultaneously with subject content). There were three intervention conditions: collaborative, individual and control. The effectiveness of the intervention was evaluated with a combination of standardised and study-specific pre- and post-tests. Results demonstrated statistically significant gains for both the individual and collaborative learning conditions in a range of thinking skills. The greatest increase in performance was seen in the collaborative learning condition. Educational implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Early narrative skills in Chilean preschool: Questions scaffold the production of coherent narratives

This study examined whether or not question answering aided the construction of coherent narratives in pre-readers. Sixty Chilean preschoolers completed two tasks using a wordless picture-book: 30 children answered questions about the story and then produced a narrative using the book; 30 children completed the tasks in reverse order. Elements of coherence were assessed in both tasks, namely problem, resolution, and mental-states. The findings indicate that questions can scaffold the production of more coherent narratives. Narratives elicited after questions were judged to be more coherent than those produced before the question–answering task. In contrast, there were no differences between scores for the question answers in the different order conditions. The results are discussed regarding the interactional role of questions and the facilitative effect they have on focusing attention to the narrative task.     

Being hurt and hurting others: children's narrative accounts and moral judgments of their own interpersonal conflicts

Children's narrative accounts and moral evaluations of their own interpersonal conflicts with peers were examined. Girls and boys (N = 112) in preschool (M= 4.8 years), first grade (M = 6.9 years), fifth grade (M = 10.9 years), and tenth grade (M = 16.2 years) provided one narrative of a time when they had been hurt by a peer ("victim"), and one of a time when they had hurt a peer ("perpetrator"). Victim and perpetrator narratives were equally long and detailed and depicted similar types of harmful behaviors, but differed significantly in terms of various measures of content and coherence. Narratives given from the victim's perspective featured a self-referential focus and a fairly coherent structure. When the same children gave accounts of situations in which they had been the perpetrators, their construals were less coherent and included multiple shifts between references to their own experience and the experience of the other. Children's moral judgments also varied by perspective, with the majority of victims making negative judgments and nearly half the perpetrators making positive or mixed judgments. These differences in moral judgments were related to the distinct ways in which victims and perpetrators construed conflict situations. Age differences were also found in both narrative construals and moral evaluations, but regardless of their age children construed conflict situations differently from the victim's and the perpetrator's perspectives. By integrating, within the study of moral development, children's interpretations of the social interactions that are at the basis of moral thinking, this approach brings us a step closer to conceptualizing the study of children's moral behavior.     

Enhancing children's literacy skills: designing the Q‐Tales ecosystem for children's e‐book design and publication

This article describes the conceptualisation and development of a pedagogical framework to support the design of e‐books for children to enhance literacy development. It emerged from research undertaken within the Q‐Tales international consortium project of the EU's Horizon 2020 Programme for Research and Innovation, where the aim was to facilitate key stakeholders to collaborate and participate in the online production and publication of high‐quality, educational e‐books for children. The pedagogical framework described here sought to answer the question “What concepts and principles undergird the effective design of pedagogically impactful e‐books for children?” It is grounded by the theoretical underpinnings of socio‐constructivism, constructionism and skill theory, and how they relate to children's literacy development. A framework describing different narrative forms and component features, key pedagogical activities appropriate for different stages of reading development and design recommendations regarding the integration of multimedia into e‐books are also central to the pedagogical framework. As well as informing the design of the Q‐Tales infrastructure for children's e‐book design and publication, we hope the guidelines and pedagogical activities enumerated here will be widely useful for those designing and developing digital, interactive narratives, particularly e‐books to enhance children's emerging literacy.     

The impact of shared book reading on children's language skills: A meta-analysis

Shared book reading is thought to have a positive impact on young children's language development, with shared reading interventions often run in an attempt to boost children's language skills. However, despite the volume of research in this area, a number of issues remain outstanding. The current meta-analysis explored whether shared reading interventions are equally effective (a) across a range of study designs; (b) across a range of different outcome variables; and (c) for children from different SES groups. It also explored the potentially moderating effects of intervention duration, child age, use of dialogic reading techniques, person delivering the intervention and mode of intervention delivery.Our results show that, while there is an effect of shared reading on language development, this effect is smaller than reported in previous meta-analyses ($\bar{g}$ = 0.194, p = .002). They also show that this effect is moderated by the type of control group used and is negligible in studies with active control groups ($\bar{g}$ = 0.028, p = .703). Finally, they show no significant effects of differences in outcome variable (ps ≥ .286), socio-economic status (p = .658), or any of our other potential moderators (ps ≥ .077), and non-significant effects for studies with follow-ups ($\bar{g}$ = 0.139, p = .200). On the basis of these results, we make a number of recommendations for researchers and educators about the design and implementation of future shared reading interventions.     

Schooling and the development of central conceptual structures: An example from the domain of children's narrative

A neo-Piagetian model is presented, and used as a framework for interpreting the developmental changes that take place in children's narrative compositions, between 4 and 10 years of age. An instructional program is then described, which is aimed at producing an increase in the developmental level of children's narratives. The program is shown to have an impact not just on the level of stories children generate, but on the extent of their story-recall as well, and on their level of understanding of a wide variety of social interactions. It is suggested: (a) that the reason for the broad transfer is that the program led to the development of a central conceptual structure; and (b) that the method that was used in designing the problem may serve as a model for designing similar programs in other content domains, where the development of such structures is considered a worthwhile objective.     

Developmental trajectories of children's spatial skills: Influencing variables and associations with later mathematical thinking

Few studies have examined the long-term relations between children's early spatial skills and their later mathematical abilities. In the current study, we investigated children's developmental trajectories of spatial skills across four waves from age 3–7 years and their association with children's later mathematical understanding. We assessed children's development in a large, heterogeneous sample of children (N = 586) from diverse cultural backgrounds and mostly low-income homes. Spatial and mathematical skills were measured using standardized assessments. Children's starting points and rate of growth in spatial skills were investigated using latent growth curve models. We explored the influence of various covariates on spatial skill development and found that socioeconomic status, language skills, and sex, but not migration background predicted children's spatial development. Furthermore, our findings showed that children's initial spatial skills––but not their rate of growth––predicted later mathematical understanding, indicating that early spatial reasoning may play a crucial role for learning mathematics.     

Chinese children's character recognition: Visuo‐orthographic,phonological processing and morphological skills

Tasks tapping visual skills, orthographic knowledge, phonological awareness, speeded naming, morphological awareness and Chinese character recognition were administered to 184 kindergarteners and 273 primary school students from Beijing. Regression analyses indicated that only syllable deletion, morphological construction and speeded number naming were unique correlates of Chinese character recognition in kindergarteners. Among primary school children, the independent correlates of character recognition were rime detection, homophone judgement, morpheme production, orthographic knowledge and speeded number naming. Results underscore the importance of some dimensions of both phonological processing and morphological awareness for both very early and intermediate Chinese reading acquisition. Although significantly correlated with character recognition in younger (but not older) children, visual skills were not uniquely associated with Chinese character reading at any grade level. However, orthographic skills were strongly associated with reading in primary school but not kindergarten, suggesting that orthographic skills are more important for literacy development as reading experience increases.     

Oral discourse skills: Dimensionality of comprehension and retell of narrative and expository texts,and the relations of language and cognitive skills to identified dimensions

We examined the dimensionality of oral discourse skills (comprehension and retell of texts) and the relations of language and cognitive skills to the identified dimensions. Data were from 529 English-speaking second graders (M_age = 7.42; 46% female; 52.6% Whites, 33.8% African Americans, 4.9% Hispanics, 4.7% two or more races, .8% Asian Americans, .6% American Indians, .2% Native Hawaiians, 2.5% unknown; data from 2014–2015 to 2016–2017). Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that oral discourse skills are best described as four related but dissociable dimensions of narrative comprehension, narrative retell, expository comprehension, and expository retell (rs = .59–.84). Language and cognitive skills had different patterns of relations to the identified dimensions and explained larger amounts of variance in comprehension than in retell.     

The development of communicative and narrative skills among preschoolers: lessons from forensic interviews about child abuse

This study examined age differences in 299 preschoolers' responses to investigative interviewers' questions exploring the suspected occurrence of child abuse. Analyses focused on the children's tendencies to respond (a) at all, (b) appropriately to the issue raised by the investigator, and (c) informatively, providing previously undisclosed information. Linear developmental trends characterized all types of responding. When the types of prompts were considered, 3- to 4-year-olds responded slightly more informatively to specific (directive) recall prompts than to open-ended prompts whereas children aged 5 and older were more responsive to open-ended recall prompts. The findings suggest that even 3-year-olds can provide information about experienced events when recall processes are activated, although the ability to provide narrative responses to open-ended recall prompts only becomes reliable later in development.     

The association between preschool children's social functioning and their emergent academic skills

This study examined the relationship between social functioning and emergent academic development in a sample of 467 preschool children (M = 55.9 months old, SD = 3.8). Teachers reported on children's aggression, attention problems, and prosocial skills. Preliteracy, language, and early mathematics skills were assessed with standardized tests. Better social functioning was associated with stronger academic development. Attention problems were related to poorer academic development controlling for aggression and social skills, pointing to the importance of attention in these relations. Children's social skills were related to academic development controlling for attention and aggression problems, consistent with models suggesting that children's social strengths and difficulties are independently related to their academic development. Support was not found for the hypothesis that these relationships would be stronger in boys than in girls. Some relationships were stronger in African American than Caucasian children. Children's self-reported feelings about school moderated several relationships, consistent with the idea that positive feelings about school may be a protective factor against co-occurring academic and social problems.     

Exploring children's perceptions of forgiveness at the interpersonal and political levels: emerging evidence in Cyprus

This small-scale study reports the findings from an investigation into non-verbal communication. It primarily seeks to analyse whether 9 and 13 year-olds can encode and decode non-verbal communication in the context of classroom behaviour management. This research showed that, in contrast to previous published research, there were no distinct differences between the ages, genders, or task types. One key finding was the frequency with which pupils misinterpreted the facial expression of anger, irrespective of the familiarity of the face, although accuracy of emotional interpretation improved with time. From observations, female staff consistently used more complementary non-verbal communication than conflicting, compared with the male staff.