Stability of Core Language Skill from Early Childhood to Adolescence: A Latent Variable Approach

This four‐wave prospective longitudinal study evaluated stability of language in 324 children from early childhood to adolescence. Structural equation modeling supported loadings of multiple age‐appropriate multisource measures of child language on single‐factor core language skills at 20 months and 4, 10, and 14 years. Large stability coefficients (standardized indirect effect = .46) were obtained between language latent variables from early childhood to adolescence even when accounting for child nonverbal intelligence and social competence and maternal verbal intelligence, education, speech, and social desirability. Stability coefficients were similar for girls and boys. Stability of core language skill was stronger from 4 to 10 to 14 years than from 20 months to 4 years, so early intervention to improve lagging language is recommended.     

Children,School Choice and Social Differences

Research into school choice has focused primarily on parental perspectives. In contrast, this study directly explores children's experiences as they are going through the secondary school choice process in two inner London primary schools. While there were important commonalities in children's experience, in this paper we have concentrated on the differences. These, we argue, lay in (a) children's material and social circumstances, (b) children's individuality, and (c) the ways in which power is played out within families. However, despite both individual and family differences there remains a strong pattern of class-related orientations to choice. We also found that while the vast majority of children were actively involved in the choice process, the children's accounts highlight an important distinction between making and getting a choice. In this particular urban locale, there is less choice for black and white working-class boys than for other groups of children.     

Confidence Intervals for a Semiparametric Approach to Modeling Nonlinear Relations among Latent Variables

Compared to parametric models, nonparametric and semiparametric approaches to modeling nonlinearity between latent variables have the advantage of recovering global relationships of unknown functional form. Bauer (2005) Bauer, D. J. 2005. A semiparametric approach to modeling nonlinear relations among latent variables. Structural Equation Modeling, 12: 513–535. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] proposed an indirect application of finite mixtures of structural equation models where latent components are estimated in the service of more flexibly recovering characteristics of the latent aggregate regression function. This article develops and evaluates delta method and parametric bootstrap approaches for obtaining approximate confidence intervals for Bauer's semiparametric approach to modeling latent nonlinear functions. Coverage rates of these approximate point-wise confidence intervals or nonsimultaneous confidence bands are evaluated by Monte Carlo and recommendations for their use are suggested.     

THE ZOMBIE STALKING ENGLISH SCHOOLS: SOCIAL CLASS AND EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY

ABSTRACT:  The aim of this article is to reclaim social class as a central concern within education, not in the traditional sense as a dimension of educational stratification, but as a powerful and vital aspect of both learner and wider social identities. Drawing on historical and present evidence, a case is made that social inequalities arising from social class have never been adequately addressed within schooling. Recent qualitative research is used to indicate some of the ways in which class is lived in classrooms. The article also raises concerns about the ability of the education system to positively address social class in the classroom when contemporary initial teacher training rarely engages with it as a relevant concern within schooling.     

Childhood Ideology in the United States: A Comparative Cultural View

Childhood ideology functions in each nation as a complex of ideas about what children are like and how best to teach and socialise them. One important domain of childhood ideology concerns ideas and practices related to children's development and behaviour management. Drawing from an analysis of popular childrearing magazines and early childhood education materials in the United States, this cultural study describes contemporary American mainstream beliefs concerning children's early emotional and behavioural development. In particular, the paper explores themes of emotional expression, autonomy, individuality, power, and consumerism. Some comparisons with Japanese views on child development and emotional/behavioural socialisation are also made. The paper suggests that popular ideas and techniques of emotional and behavioural management in the United States in both families and early childcare environments reflect a dominant ideology of children that has potentially negative consequences for children's welfare. Furthermore, childhood ideologies, while retaining culturally specific values and ideas neither remain static nor exist in isolation from one another. The paper questions the global diffusion of a Western-style professionalised discourse of child psychology that may not be applicable to all nations and their children.     

Child care in Kenya

Kenya—East African nation of big game, tourism, thorn trees, and white sand beaches—is facing a new challenge in preschool education. With nearly 20 percent of the children under five in some type of child care situation, it is possible that everyday preschool experiences may be leading children either closer to, or away from, the values of their parents. The test for this relatively new nation is to find the proper balance between the goals of the preschool and the values of both traditional and modernized parents. It is a topic of equal importance in any nation where a great many preschoolers are cared for by persons other than their parents.