Children Persist Less When Adults Take Over

Children need to learn to persist through challenges, yet adults sometimes step in to solve problems for them. Here, we looked at how adult taking over related to children’s persistence. In an observational study (N = 34, ages 4–8), we found that parents who took over more often during a challenging puzzle task rated their children as dispositionally less persistent. To establish whether taking over can cause reduced persistence, we ran two preregistered experiments (N = 150, ages 4–5). Children assigned to a taking over condition persisted less on a subsequent task compared to those in a teaching or a baseline condition. Reframing the context did not ameliorate the negative impact of taking over. The results suggest that taking over impairs children’s persistence.     

Helping Children Thrive at School: The Effectiveness of Nurture Groups

This paper describes a nurture group pilot project that took place in three schools in Hampshire. Results suggested that children in the nurture groups made significant social and emotional gains after attending a group. These gains were recognised by the children themselves and their parents. They were also generalised into the classroom. Teachers at the end of the pilot project felt more empowered to meet the needs of children presenting with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. This paper concludes by identifying factors which contribute to the success of nurture groups and highlights future research issues.     

Is the Film 2012 a True Story？

人类历史发展至今,已经脱离了刀耕火种的原始生存状态,步入了一种前所未有的文明时期。人类利用日渐发达的聪明才智,制造出汽车、飞机等交通工具,并登上了月球,而且还在火星和深深的海洋中安排机器人进行勘测……然而,随着文明的进步,也出现了很多破坏环境的问题。既然历史的车轮无法让我们再回到从前简单的生活方式当中,就只有认识到人类曾经对环境犯下的错误,并在将来的日子里认真纠正,虽然任重道远。     

Preschool Children Rarely Seek Empirical Data That Could Help Them Complete a Task When Observation and Testimony Conflict

Children (N = 278, 34–71 months, 54% girls) were told which of two figurines turned on a music box and also observed empirical evidence either confirming or conflicting with that testimony. Children were then asked to sort novel figurines according to whether they could make the music box work or not. To see whether children would explore which figurine turned on the music box, especially when the observed and testimonial evidence conflicted, children were given access to the music box during their sorting. However, children rarely explored. Indeed, they struggled to disregard the misleading testimony both when sorting the figurines and when asked about a future attempt. In contrast, children who explored the effectiveness of the figurines dismissed the misleading testimony.     

攻击与被攻击幼儿教育策略浅释

对攻击与被攻击幼儿采取怎样的态度和教育措施将直接影响到幼儿的身心健康与成长．幼儿园教师可通过换位角色游戏促进幼儿的移情体验，并针对攻击与被攻击幼儿的不同成因对症下药，家长应在走出“攻击性行为不算严重错误”的误区的同时净化家庭环境．     

Helping Students Help Themselves: Strategies for Successful Mentoring Relationships

Mentoring has long been heralded as a method of training and socializing the next generation of professional counselors and counselor educators. Yet, there appears to be a disparity between the promotion and the practice of mentoring in counselor education. The authors attempted to reconcile this disparity by suggesting a set of strategies that mentors and apprentices may use as they establish and maintain successful mentoring relationships. Implications for counselors and counselor educators are discussed.     

When Children Are Water: Representation of Central American Migrant Children in Public Discourse and Implications for Educators

Since June, 2014 when the U.S. government began to document an increase in unaccompanied/separated children arriving in the United States from Central America, these children have become a frequent topic in media discourse. Because rhetoric about immigration issues have been shown to affect schooling of these children, the present article aims to examine how these children are represented in the discourse of one community. Findings from this critical multimodal discourse analysis reveal multiple strategies of representation that result in the dominant metaphor of IMMIGRANT CHILDREN ARE DANGEROUS WATER and negative perceptions that have implications for the education of these students.     

Meeting High Standards: The Challenge of Ensuring That Homeless Children Are Part of the All

The Improving America's Schools Act (IASA), particularly Title I, has changed dramatically since the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. The new Title I policy ambitiously states: The Congress declares it to be the policy of the United States that a high-quality education for all individuals and a fair and equal opportunity to obtain that education are a societal good, are a moral imperative, and improve the life of every individual, because the quality of our individual lives ultimately depends on the quality of the lives of others. (IASA, 1994).     

Mystery Boxes: Helping Children Improve their Reasoning

   This guest editorial describes ways teachers can use guessing games about an unknown item in a “mystery box” to help children improve their abilities to listen to others, recall information, ask purposeful questions, classify items by class, make inferences, synthesize information, and draw conclusions. The author presents information from a qualitative analysis of 90 preservice teachers’ reflections on using mystery boxes with preschool through elementary students in urban public school settings in central New York State. Children were enthusiastic about the game, used a variety of strategies to generate questions, experienced difficulties in paying attention, remembering and synthesizing information, and had difficulty focusing on more than one characteristic at a time. Errors included repetition of questions and class inclusion/exclusion errors. Modeling, thinking out loud, and giving hints helped children become successful. Creating one’s own mystery box, exercises in identifying attributes and classifying items, and practice in questioning techniques are among suggested follow-on activities.     

What Students Think and Do in Classroom Teams When Peer Evaluations Are Highly Consequential: A Two‐Stage Study

The article presents findings from a two‐stage study that examined student perceptions of peer evaluations (PEs) conducted in undergraduate business classroom teams. In stage 1, we used qualitative research to identify constructs focal in students’ PE‐related cognitive schemas and developed grounded measurement scales and hypotheses about their relationships. Then, we implemented PEs in 17 sections of undergraduate business courses taught over seven semesters. The PEs were highly consequential; i.e., they entirely determined the grade each student received on her/his team project. At the end of each semester, we surveyed student perceptions and behaviors using measurement scales we developed after stage 1 of the study. We find that the knowledge of impending PEs leads students to exercise a great deal of care in terms of what they say and do while working with others. The higher levels of care trigger both impression management behaviors and perceptions that others are contributing more. The perceptions that others are contributing more seem instrumental in shaping students’ decision to contribute more themselves. Implications for instructors and future research are discussed.     

Humanizing Instructional Videos in Physics: When Less Is More

Many instructors in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields are striving to create active learning environments in their classrooms and in doing so are frequently moving the lecture portion of their course into online video format. In this classroom-based study, we used a two group randomized experimental design to examine the efficacy of an instructional video that incorporates a human hand demonstrating and modeling how to solve frictional inclined plane problems compared to an identical video that did not include the human hand. The results show that the learners who viewed the video without the human hand present performed significantly better on a learning test and experienced a significantly better training efficiency than the learners who viewed the video with the human hand present. Meanwhile, those who learned with the human hand present in the instructional video rated the instructor as being more humanlike and engaging. The results have implications for both theory and practice. Implications for those designing instructional videos are discussed, as well as the limitations of the current study.     

Are We Who We Think We Are: Evaluating Brand Promise at a Liberal-Arts Institution

For this research we developed a series of questions for students at a small, private, not-for-profit institution in order to determine whether or not the students’ perceptions match what the institution believes itself to be as expressed in its brand promise statement. We examined whether or not the institution’s marketing and its brand help students form a perception that matches reality. Results show that incoming freshmen students, the same students at the end of the first year, and also exiting seniors perceived the institution consistently and in accordance with its brand promise. Results help to inform recruiting strategies and strategic planning.     

Developmental Changes in Infant Spatial Categorization: When More Is Best and When Less Is Enough

Two experiments examined infants' ability to form a spatial category when habituated to few (only 2) or many (6) exemplars of a spatial relation. Sixty‐four infants of 10 months and 64 infants of 14 months were habituated to dynamic events in which a toy was placed in a consistent spatial relation (in or on) to a referent object. At 10 months, infants formed a spatial category (looking longer at an unfamiliar than familiarized spatial relation) only when habituated to 6 exemplars. At 14 months, infants formed the spatial category regardless of the number of habituation exemplars. The results highlight developmental changes in infant spatial categorization and show that increasing exemplar number facilitates this ability in infants of 10 months.     

Mindsets That Promote Resilience: When Students Believe That Personal Characteristics Can Be Developed

Because challenges are ubiquitous, resilience is essential for success in school and in life. In this article we review research demonstrating the impact of students’ mindsets on their resilience in the face of academic and social challenges. We show that students who believe (or are taught) that intellectual abilities are qualities that can be developed (as opposed to qualities that are fixed) tend to show higher achievement across challenging school transitions and greater course completion rates in challenging math courses. New research also shows that believing (or being taught) that social attributes can be developed can lower adolescents’ aggression and stress in response to peer victimization or exclusion, and result in enhanced school performance. We conclude by discussing why psychological interventions that change students’ mindsets are effective and what educators can do to foster these mindsets and create resilience in educational settings.     

儿童是谁——基于社会学的一种追问

儿童是谁?关于这个问题有两种社会学的解读路径.从社会来看儿童,儿童是社会文化的承载者、学校存在价值的体现者、家庭生命的延续者、同伴群体的生产者和自身社会化的承担者.从儿童来看社会,儿童是社会发展的见证者、享用者、参与者和接班人.     

When Less is More: Cultivating a Community in Relationship with God

Abstract

What does it look like to cultivate a community in right relationship with God? In taking the focus off individual members and placing it on the community itself, we recognize that the whole of a university is greater than the sum of its parts, and that individual parts are repeatedly and continually shaped and defined by the whole. Being in right relationship with God begins with acknowledging our longings to be loved, to be known, and to belong in ways encouraging us to put ourselves intentionally and consistently in God’s gaze of love. Coming before God empty-handed and agenda-less, rather than starting another discipleship program or Bible Study, helps us lean into God’s love already at work—common grace. Gratitude flows from opening our eyes to the wonder of God’s sustaining love active around us. As we gaze at God, who is gazing at us, we are transformed—saved from envy, pettiness, selfishness, and sense of entitlement. Transformation begins with grace, where the response is a gratitude that moves back to God and is expressed in love of neighbor—love of all created things, both seen and unseen, held together by Christ. This movement of God in our college communities is cultivated by a shared identity as a Christian community, by seeing and knowing each other, being seen and known, using chapel as a Holy Place, and turning our love outward.     

Children Who Help Victims of Bullying: Implications for Practice

Over the years, literature on the phenomenon of bullying has evolved from treating bullying as an individual behavior to understanding it as a group process. Other than those of the bully and the victim, researchers have identified several roles children assume in bullying situations, with some assuming a pro-social role, often called the defender, in bullying scenarios. Practice literature continues to concentrate its attention narrowly on the bully and the victim, rather than on defenders. Understanding the individual and social circumstances related to defending suggests new avenues for practitioners interested in promoting improved peer relations in schools.     

The Humans That We Are: Prison Poetry Tour Narrative

Poet Caits Meissner shares her reimagined book tour, bringing free writing and collaborative reading workshops to spaces of incarceration around the country.