Children’s attributions about teachers’ intentions

Hostile attribution bias (HAB) has been shown to predict aggressive behavior, especially toward peers. The current study examined whether HAB is also related to conflict with teachers, an important predictor of academic and social success in school‐aged children. A total of 282 second to fourth grade boys in 74 classrooms completed a self‐report measure of HAB toward teachers, while their teachers assessed conflict in the teacher–student relationship. Results supported the presence of a positive relationship between HAB toward teachers and conflict with teachers. These findings suggest that HAB toward teachers may be an indicator of difficulties and, pending further research, a potential avenue for intervention to improve teacher–student relationships.     

Revisiting the Emergence of Young Children’s Literacy: One Child Tells Her Story

This article explores the progression of one child’s literacy from 4 months to 38 months. The emergence of literate behaviour is interpreted in the light of current theories such as those of Halliday and Dyson. One of the most significant aspects of this emergence is shown to be interaction with others in authentic literacy activities, a feature which has a number of implications for teachers and researchers alike.     

Children’s Drawing in the UK and China

We report the results of a comparative study of drawings completed by 952 children aged between 6–13 years in the UK and Chinese ordinary schools. Although there was no significant difference in standard between the drawings of these two cultural groups the drawings of 240 children who attended a week-end art school in Beijing were given consistently higher ratings. In addition, there were noticeable differences in style, composition, colour and depth cues among all three samples.     

Parenting and Child DRD4 Genotype Interact to Predict Children’s Early Emerging Effortful Control

Effortful control (EC), or the trait‐like capacity to regulate dominant responses, has important implications for children’s development. Although genetic factors and parenting likely influence EC, few studies have examined whether they interact to predict its development. This study examined whether the DRD4 exon III variable number tandem repeat polymorphism moderated the relation between parenting and children’s EC. Three hundred and eighty‐two 3‐year‐olds and primary caregivers completed behavioral tasks assessing children’s EC and parenting. Children’s DRD4 genotypes moderated the relation between parenting and EC: Children with at least one 7‐repeat allele displayed lower EC in the context of negative parenting than children without this allele. These findings suggest opportunities for modifying early risk for low EC.     

Teacher–Child Interactions in Chile and Their Associations With Prekindergarten Outcomes

Quality of teacher–child interactions is central to prekindergarten children's learning. In the United States, the quality of teacher–child interactions is commonly assessed using the teaching through interactions conceptual framework and an associ/ated observational tool, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). This study examined: (a) whether there was evidence supporting three distinctive domains of teacher–child interactions in Chile (construct validity) and (b) whether these domains predicted end‐of‐prekindergarten language, academic, and executive function skills in Chile (predictive validity). The sample consisted of 91 Chilean prekindergarten classrooms (1,868 four‐year‐old children). The findings support both construct and predictive validity of the teaching through interactions conceptual framework as assessed by the CLASS in Chile. Implications for cross‐country comparison of quality of teacher–child interactions in prekindergarten classrooms are discussed.     

Parental Reports of Children’s Scale Errors in Everyday Life

Scale errors refer to behaviors where young children attempt to perform an action on an object that is too small to effectively accommodate the behavior. The goal of this study was to examine the frequency and characteristics of scale errors in everyday life. To do so, the researchers collected parental reports of children’s (age range = 13–21 months at onset) scale errors over a 6‐month period. All but 1 of the parents (N = 30) reported at least 1 scale error with an average of 3.2 scale errors per child. These results suggest that most, if not all, children commit scale errors during early childhood.     

Child Temperament and Total Diurnal Cortisol in Out-of-Home Center-Based Child Care and in At-Home Parental Care

The association between child temperament characteristics and total diurnal saliva cortisol in 84 children (M = 2.3 years, SD = 0.6) attending out-of-home, center-based child care and 79 children (M = 2.0 years, SD = 0.5) attending at-home parental care was examined. Saliva samples were collected during two consecutive days, that is, Sunday and Monday, with four samples taken per day. While children higher in surgency had higher total diurnal cortisol production, we did not find evidence that temperament moderated the associations between child-care context and total diurnal cortisol. Negative affectivity and effortful control were not related to cortisol output. Our findings suggest that temperamental surgency may be associated with higher total cortisol production in early childhood across child-care settings.     

Children’s Responses to Interparental Conflict: A Meta‐Analysis of Their Associations With Child Adjustment

A meta‐analysis examined the relations between children’s adjustment and children’s cognitive, affective, behavioral, and physiological responses to interparental conflict. Studies included children between 5 and 19 years of age. Moderate effect sizes were found for the associations between cognitions and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems and self‐esteem problems, negative affect and behavioral responses and internalizing behavior problems, and behavioral responses and self‐esteem problems. Small to moderate effect sizes were found for the associations between cognitions and relational problems, negative affect and behavioral responses and externalizing behavior problems, and physiological reactions and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Effect sizes were, with 1 exception, larger for internalizing than for externalizing behavior problems. Age significantly moderated the majority of effect sizes.     

Changing Teacher–Child Dyadic Interactions to Improve Preschool Children's Externalizing Behaviors

A randomized controlled trial was used to examine the impact of an attachment‐based, teacher–child, dyadic intervention (Banking Time) to improve children's externalizing behavior. Participants included 183 teachers and 470 preschool children (3–4 years of age). Classrooms were randomly assigned to Banking Time, child time, or business as usual (BAU). Sparse evidence was found for main effects on child behavior. Teachers in Banking Time demonstrated lower negativity and fewer positive interactions with children compared to BAU teachers at post assessment. The impacts of Banking Time and child time on reductions of parent‐ and teacher‐reported externalizing behavior were greater when teachers evidenced higher‐quality, classroom‐level, teacher–child interactions at baseline. An opposite moderating effect was found for children's positive engagement with teachers.     

Children’s use of drawing as a pre-writing strategy

In this study the writing products of 60 third-grade students, who drew before writing a story on a self-selected topic, was compared with the writing products of 59 third-grade students who wrote without drawing. The students in the group which drew before writing tended to produce more words, more sentences and more idea units, and their overall writing performance was higher than the students who wrote without drawing. These findings were consistent for boys as well as girls. Implications for writing research and instruction are discussed.     

Children’s Drawing,Self Expression,Identity and the Imagination

Directions, Volume 18 Number 1 [1] suggests that postmodern theory is beginning to have a significant effect upon educational practice. Atkinson [2] has directed attention towards the effects of both the construction of the subject and the real within art teaching. Much postmodern theory challenges the unitary, pre–existing subject. This paper will argue that the persistence of an ideology of self–expression which asserts that all representation is in connection with (should be read in relation to) a singular, pure, pre–existing self acts to limit our understandings of the complexity of children’s representations and is in conflict with many contemporary positions. Research has centred on the development of ‘out of school’ sketchbooks. Large sketchbooks were given out to nursery and reception children paired with older siblings in primary education. Possible drawing activities and interests were discussed and children were left to develop the sketchbooks at home. Two weeks later (including a half term holiday) the children were interviewed in relation to the drawings developed. The drawings have been considered in relation to contemporary approaches to self and identity. The conclusions of this paper revolve around the possibilities of reading children’s drawing in relation to self and identity through the interaction of social context, discursive practice and agency in a manner which is suggested by Ricouer’s formulation of the social imaginary. Additionally, the substitution of tenacious notions of expression with concepts of agency and contingency grounded in the characteristics of ‘citationality’, articulation and narrative are suggested as a basis for developing the educational potential of drawing.     

Action,Autobiography and Aesthetics in Young Children’s Self-Initiated Drawings

Lark-Horovitz, Lewis, and Luca [1973] described the emergence of ‘subject matter specialists,’ children who create series of self-initiated or voluntary drawings featuring consistent themes, characters, or settings that seem particularly compelling to them. A decade-long study of the images preschool and kindergarten children create when invited to draw in their own sketchbooks in the context of a weekly art class suggests that the choice of what to draw shapes the process of learning how to draw in decisive ways. The interests young children develop and pursue in drawing and in other forms of symbolic play are influenced by gender and by culture, by personality and circumstance. The choices children make inevitably open certain possibilities and foreclose others, shaping early artistic learning in decisive ways. Many early childhood educators [e.g., Katz, 1993] maintain that young children’s learning should be firmly grounded in first-hand experience. However, children whose drawings are autobiographical in content may be less consistent in choosing topics for drawing and prone to pass the time between significant images by drawing designs and symbols which seem less personally meaningful and engaging. Children who draw upon imaginative themes seem to have an inexhaustible source of inspiration ready at hand when they begin to draw. According to Egan [1988], the fictional or mythic nature of these representations may serve young children’s quest to make sense of their experiences in ways that explorations of the everyday do not.     

Taking Comics Seriously: Children’s Periodical Reading in England in the 1990s

Periodicals, that is newspapers, magazines and comics, have always represented a substantial proportion of children’s reading outside school. They have not always been accepted or considered as reading within schools. Martin Coles and Chris Hall here present the results of the most recent survey to shed light on the periodical reading which is actually happening among today’s children. They present some important findings which have the potential to alter significantly the ways teachers see this kind of reading and its possible contribution to the development of literacy.     

Children’s private speech during algorithmic and heuristic drawing tasks

This cross-sectional study examined the private speech and task-related activity of 108 school-aged children while they drew pictures of real objects (i.e., a house, a person, and an animal) and make-believe objects (i.e., a house, a person, and an animal) to investigate developmental and task-related changes in self-regulation. Composite scores for each first-grade (N=36), third-grade (N=36), and fifth-grade (N=36) participant were calculated from the repeated raw frequencies of overall private speech and private speech in conjunction with task-related behavior during the two types of drawing activities (i.e., real and make-believe). Scores were then analyzed using regression analysis and 3×2 (Grade×Task Type) ANOVA’s to explore study hypotheses. This study found that: (1) there was a concave curvilinear developmental trend in overall private speech production, (2) participants utilized more private speech during heuristic (i.e., make-believe) drawing tasks than algorithmic (i.e., real) drawing tasks, and (3) school-aged children used private speech in conjunction with task-related behavior in a different manner during the two types of drawing activities. These findings contribute to the Vygotskian perspective regarding the development and function of private speech.     

The Effects of Reciprocal Imitation on Teacher–Student Relationships and Student Learning Outcomes

Neuroscientific and developmental psychological research in imitation has yielded important insights into building teacher–student relationships and enhancing students' learning. This study investigated the effects of reciprocal imitation on teacher–student relationships and students' learning outcomes in one‐on‐one teacher–student interactions. In a within‐subjects design, participants learned eight English vocabulary words under two conditions: one condition paired with teacher's imitative behaviors and the other with teacher's random behaviors. Students' self‐rating surveys and quiz scores on new words were assessed. When the teacher imitated the students' behaviors in interactions, the students reported significantly higher perceptions of rapport, more confidence in and satisfaction with learning outcomes, and had significantly higher quiz scores. Results had important implications for teachers in using imitation as an effective teaching tool to build teacher–student relationships and enhance students' learning.     

Learning about literacy: Children’s versions of the Literacy Hour

This article reports on an enquiry into the responses of a class of Year 1 children, aged 5‐6 years, to the first eight months of the National Literacy Strategy (NLS). Children were given incomplete drawings to represent the four parts of the Literacy Hour. In completing the drawings the children made their own interpretations of the Literacy Hour. They could choose to write thought or speech bubbles, draw faces and expressions, make written or dictated comments about the teacher and the children portrayed. The methodology enabled these young children to articulate detailed responses to their experience of a particular style of teaching. Each child documented a range of attitudes to and feelings about whole class teaching, group work and the plenary session. These insights, which were often challenging, put the emotional dimension of learning at the centre of their experiences of the NLS.     

Transactional Links Between Teacher–Child Relationship Quality and Perceived Versus Sociometric Popularity: A Three‐Wave Longitudinal Study

This study examined how peer relationships (i.e., sociometric and perceived popularity) and teacher–child relationships (i.e., support and conflict) impact one another throughout late childhood. The sample included 586 children (46% boys), followed annually from Grades 4 to 6 (M_age.wave1 = 9.26 years). Autoregressive cross‐lagged modeling was applied. Results stress the importance of peer relationships in shaping teacher–child relationships and vice versa. Higher sociometric popularity predicted more teacher–child support, which in turn predicted higher sociometric popularity, beyond changes in children's prosocial behavior. Higher perceived popularity predicted more teacher–child conflict (driven by children's aggressive behavior), which, in turn and in itself, predicted higher perceived popularity. The influence of the “invisible hand” of both teachers and peers in classrooms has been made visible.     

Children’s Eyewitness Memory for Multiple Real‐Life Events

The present research examined the influence of prior knowledge on children’s free recall, cued recall, recognition memory, and source memory judgments for a series of similar real‐life events. Forty children (5–12 years old) attended 4 thematic birthday parties and were later interviewed about the events that transpired during the parties using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development protocol. Of the events, half were generic in that they could have occurred at any birthday party, and half were specific to the theme of the party. Older children demonstrated more evidence of using gist‐based information to guide their memory performance than did younger children. However, younger children were able to use global gist to inform their source memory judgments, qualifying past word‐learning research.     

Young Children’s Representations of Spatial and Functional Relations Between Objects

Three experiments investigated changes from 15 to 30 months of age in children’s (N = 114) mastery of relations between an object and an aperture, supporting surface, or form. When choosing between objects to insert into an aperture, older children selected objects of an appropriate size and shape, but younger children showed little selectivity. Further experiments probed the sources of younger children’s difficulty by comparing children’s performance placing a target object in a hole, on a 2‐dimensional form, or atop another solid object. Together, the findings suggest that some factors limiting adults’ object representations, including the difficulty of comparing the shapes of positive and negative spaces and of representing shapes in 3 dimensions, contribute to young children’s errors in manipulating objects.     

Adrenocortical Underpinnings of Children’s Psychological Reactivity to Interparental Conflict

This study examined interrelationships among children’s cortisol reactivity and their psychological reactivity to interparental conflict in a sample of 208 first graders (mean age = 6.6 years). Assessments of children’s psychological reactivity to conflict distinguished among their distress, hostile, and involvement responses across multiple methods (i.e., observation, questionnaire) and informants (i.e., observer, parent). Relative to other forms of conflict reactivity, children’s distress responses to interparental conflict were consistent, unique predictors of their elevated cortisol reactivity to interparental conflict even after inclusion of demographic factors as moderators and covariates. Moderator analyses further revealed that associations between distress and elevated cortisol levels in response to interparental conflict were particularly pronounced when children exhibited high levels of involvement in conflicts.