Young children learning about well-being and environmental education in the early years: a funds of knowledge approach

Early childhood educators currently provide content focused learning opportunities for children in the areas of well-being and environmental education. However, these are usually seen as discrete content areas and educators are challenged with responding to children’s interests in popular-culture inspired food products given these influence their consumption of energy-dense, nutrient-poor and highly packaged food in the early childhood setting. This paper reports preliminary findings from a pilot randomised trial examining the interconnectedness of sustainability, well-being and popular-culture in early childhood education. Planning, assessment documentation and summaries from twenty-four learning experiences implemented by six educators over a six-week period were analysed using a deductive approach. Twenty well-being and environmental education topics were identified and shown to be generated by the educators when considering the children’s ‘funds of knowledge’ on popular-culture inspired food products. We argue that topics derived from children’s engagement with popular-culture may help educators to create an integrated approach to curriculum provision. This may impact child weight and facilitate obesity prevention and environmental sustainability as children create stronger connections between these content areas and their everyday choices and practices.     

Zum Problem der Hochschulreform in Spanien: Einige Ausgewählte Daten

Over the past ten years there has been a sweeping reform of the courses taught and qualifications awarded by Spanish universities. For that reason, an investigation was launched in 1996–97 at the University of Santiago de Compostela (in Northwest Spain) into the teaching, research and management entailed in four new degree courses: physics (years one to four), agricultural engineering (first and second years), agricultural food-processing technology (years one to three) and pharmacy. This article reports on students' opinions of the reforms in these courses, revealing dissatisfaction with facilities for practical course work, lack of connection with prospective employment, and a call for more information about courses.     

Evaluation and publication delay in Ibero-American scientific journals

This article analyses the review, acceptance and publication dates of a sample of 21,890 articles from 326 Ibero-American scientific journals from all subject areas and countries included in the Latindex Catalogue 2.0 and published between 2018 and 2020 (freely available as an open access dataset). The aim is to discover evaluation and publication times. The evaluation process takes a median of 110 days, the publication process, a median of 82 days, and the whole process, a median of 224 days. Statistical differences are found according to periodicity, subject areas, countries, existence of a printed version and article type (Call for Papers or General articles). From the data we find that the delay in publication is longer than publishers themselves report to the DOAJ. STEM areas present the most similarity in publication patterns, having a higher number of evaluation days (Ed) than publication days (Pd); Arts and Humanities present the opposite pattern, with a higher Pd than Ed. In the case of Social Sciences, the times are similar. General articles and Call for Papers articles differ in terms of Ed, but not Pd, indicating that Call for Papers revisions are faster.     

Who talks how to their kids about TV: A clarification of demographic correlates of parental mediation patterns

A random telephone survey (N = 255) of Washington state parents of children between the ages of 2 and 17 assesses parents’ reported patterns of interaction with their children regarding television, along with parental viewing habits and perceptions of television content. Demographic differences in mediation and coviewing patterns, as well as parental attitudes toward television, are explored, and explanations for these differences are considered. It is concluded that education is a weak predictor of mediation levels, single parents do not differ from dual parents in attitudes about television, and that the negative relationship of income to positive mediation and use of television as a babysitter is related more to overall viewing patterns and environmental constraints, rather than to attitudinal differences. It is suggested that demographics hold little value jar explaining why and how parents hold particular attitudes or engage in particular behaviors relevant to television and parenting.     

Stress sensitivity and reading performance in Spanish: A study with children

This paper investigates the relationship between ability to detect changes in prosody and reading performance in Spanish. Participants were children aged 7–8 years. Their tasks consisted of reading words, reading non‐words, stressing non‐words and reproducing sequences of two, three or four non‐words by pressing the corresponding keys on the computer keyboard. Non‐word sequences were constructed with minimal non‐word pairs differing in a single phoneme (/kúpi/ ‐ /kúti/) or in the stress pattern (/mípa/ ‐ /mipá/). Results showed that performance on phoneme contrast sequences (e.g. /kúpi/ ‐ /kúti/) predicted word reading. In contrast, performance on stress contrast sequences (e.g. /mípa/ ‐ /mipá/) predicted non‐word reading, but only when two‐non‐word sequences were analysed. This suggests that stress sensitivity may be one of the factors related to reading fluency as most errors at reading non‐words consisted of false starts and pauses between syllables. Results also showed that stress sensitivity (scored in two non‐word sequences) predicted stress assignment, and that knowledge of stress rules predicted both word and non‐word reading. This suggests that stress sensitivity may help in learning stress rules, and that knowledge of stress rules is relevant for reading.     

Examining the Legacy of Urban Catholic Schooling in the U.S.: A Systematic Literature Review

The Urban Review - Research conducted in the twentieth century found urban Catholic schools in the U.S. had a legacy of providing high quality educational opportunities for low-income students and...     

The development of analogical reading in Spanish

The use and development of analogical processes in learning to read in Spanish are presented. In the first experiment, the results show that children of 6 years old show analogical effects in reading pseudowords and that the magnitude of this effect is the same as with 10 years old children. However, it is found that children of 10 years old make many lexicalizations when reading pseudowords (about 50% of the items). In experiment 2 this finding is further analyzed. The results show that 9 years old children make more lexicalizations than adult control subjects do. It is suggested that the development of analogical procedures is a fast process (6 years old children already have done it), but that the precise control of lexical information over perceptual one is a later process.     

Pedagogic practices in the family socializing context and children's school achievement

This paper describes a qualitative study about pedagogic practices in the family. The pedagogic code underlying family practices is characterized and related to specific social groups. Students' achievement is discussed in relation to family and school pedagogic practices. The analysis of family pedagogic practice was based on a model derived from Bernstein's theory. The model considers two main dimensions, the coding orientation and its specific realizations in both the instructional and regulative contexts. It provided indicators of the family discursive context and the form in which knowledges and values are transmitted. The model developed allowed a deep and delicate analysis of the family socializing context. The study showed that families differ in their coding orientation and pedagogic practices, and suggested that there are factors other than social groups to determine family's pedagogic practice. It also suggested that specific familial practices may explain children's differential achievement at school.