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.     

Observational studies about novices interacting in a Prolog environment based on tools

This paper examines the general issues related to the interaction of novices in a Prolog environment based on tools to support both the operational and the declarative aspects of the language. The tools are based on graphical representations for the Prolog program and for Prolog execution of programs. This research aims to investigate how students come to understand and integrate these different views of Prolog and how the tools affect their understanding of the language.Observations conducted during this study show that the novices had an initial conceptual model of the virtual machine. Such models guided their interpretation of the Prolog program and of the behavior of the machine. Their misunderstandings may be interpreted as having resulted from their current models. These models evolved during their interaction within the environment. The type of feedback created by the tools provided changes in the students perspective related to the knowledge being represented (program) and the interlocutor in the process (virtual machine), which led them to the construction of the conceptual model of the language.     

Potential conflicts between ownership rights and environmental protection: Swedish undergraduate students’ views

Abstract

This study examines the perspectives of Swedish undergraduate students regarding potential conflicts between ownership rights and environmental protection. Conceptions of ‘ownership’ are relevant in relation to the environment and environmental protection as they can highlight a more transboundary relationship between the individual/society and nature. Students studying economics, law and political science were chosen because of their potential future transformative roles as decision makers and policy makers. Content analysis was employed to examine the written responses of 747 students from seven different universities to the open-ended survey question: Can ownership rights and environmental protection come into conflict? Students’ responses were measured twice: at the very beginning of the first semester and then again at the end of the semester. The results show that students expressed a dominant view of ownership in terms of individual ownership, and associations to collective ownership were largely absent. In regards to the potential conflict between ownership rights and environmental protection, most students perceived such a conflict, and it was more common for the environment to be conceptualised as the losing party rather than the landowner. More research is needed regarding how teaching and instruction can deal with the potential conflicts between ownership (private/corporate/governmental) and environmental protection.     

Moral development in a violent society: Colombian children's judgments in the context of survival and revenge

Ninety-six Colombian children (mean age = 7.7 years) and adolescents (mean age = 14.6 years) made judgments about stealing and physical harm in the abstract and in the context of survival and revenge. All participants judged it wrong to steal or hurt others because of considerations with justice and welfare, and most also judged it wrong to engage in such actions even when they can aid in survival. Their judgments in the context of revenge were more mixed, with a sizable proportion endorsing stealing and hurting in that condition. Furthermore, the majority expected that people would steal and hurt others in most situations. Significant age differences were also found. The consequences of political violence for moral development are discussed.     

Cultural‐competence considerations for contemporary school‐based threat assessment

Threat‐assessment procedures are advanced for their utility in reducing racial disparities in punitive and exclusionary school discipline outcomes. Generally unexamined, however, is bias in who gets referred for school‐based threat assessment and under what circumstances. Cultural‐competence considerations hold promise for addressing sources of bias in the evaluation of threats made in the school setting. Using a quantitative approach, this systematic literature review examines the degree to which contemporary cultural‐competence considerations are embedded in 24 school‐based threat‐assessment articles published between 2007 and 2017. Results indicate generally poor coverage of considerations for cultural competence both within and across threat‐assessment articles. An analysis of change in cultural‐competence considerations by year of publication suggests that more recently published threat‐assessment literature has generally not integrated concurrent advancements in concepts of cultural competence. Preliminary guidance for incorporating contemporary cultural‐competence considerations into school‐based threat‐assessment procedures are provided.     

The Adult Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Italian and American Short Forms

Objective. The aims of this article were to test the measurement invariance of the Italian and American versions of the Adult Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire and to compare adults’ remembrances of parental acceptance–rejection across the two nations. Design. The Adult Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire was administered to 564 Italian adults (M = 23.04 years) and 509 U.S. American adults (M = 22.09 years), matched by gender and age. The measurement invariance of the Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire was first established by means of multi-group confirmatory factor analyses. Results. The Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire is fully invariant across the two cultures, and adults organize their remembrances of mothers’ and fathers’ parenting around the same four classes of behavior in both nations. Italian and American adults tend to remember their parents as having been quite loving, with Italian parents being remembered as slightly less warm and more hostile than American parents. Conclusions. The full invariance of the Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire across the two populations represents additional strong evidence for the universality of interpersonal acceptance–rejection theory. Measurement invariance also confirmed that the Adult Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire (short form) can be used to measure adult remembrances of parental acceptance–rejection across these two populations.     

In Pursuit of a Connected Way of Knowing: The Case of One Mathematics Teacher

In this paper, we offer illustrations of a mathematics teacher’s difficulties with content knowledge when trying to find connections between school mathematics and science; we do so by describing the development of this teacher’s thinking and learning in her pursuit of connections between the concepts of slope of a line and density of matter. The paper is based on a sub-study that is part of a larger Colombian project, PROMESA (Creating Science and Mathematics Connected Learning Experiences that Open Opportunities for the Promotion of Algebraic Reasoning), which incorporated a Professional Learning Programme (PLP) seeking to integrate school science and mathematics teachers into working teams, in order to create science and mathematics connected learning experiences that considered the promotion of algebraic reasoning. The ‘challenging questions’ that emerged for this teacher, during the workshops of the induction stage of the PLP, became the driving force for her continued engagement in learning mathematics content in a connected way, as opposed to the compartmentalised content-item thinking that she had experienced as a school student. We provide illustrations of first steps in the development of a teacher’s mathematical understanding, which can support growth of mathematical knowledge for teaching.