Satisfaction with adult children’s achievements is associated with depression and loneliness in later-life: the mediating roles of children’s support and gratitude

We examined the mediating roles of gratitude and children support in the relationship between satisfaction with adult children’s achievements, and depression/loneliness in a sample of 465 community elders of Ekiti State, Nigeria. The sample includes 294 women and 171 men with mean age 74.18 (SD = 9.42) selected by means of multistage sampling method. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results suggested that satisfaction with adult children’s achievements was negatively associated with depression and loneliness. However, these relationships were found to be successively mediated by children’s support and gratitude. Specifically, gratitude fully mediated the relationship between satisfaction with adult children’s achievements and loneliness while children’s support was a partial mediator. Also, gratitude partially mediated the relationship between satisfaction with adult children’s achievements and depression while children’s support did not. The fit indices for the mediation model achieved the acceptable cuff-off for model fitness, CFI = .95, RMSEA = .042, 90% CI = (.033, .05, SRMR = .05, with 46% and 28% variance in depression and loneliness, respectively. In the management of geriatric depression and loneliness, mental health professionals may assess satisfaction with adult children’s achievements and utilize gratitude interventions for a happy and successful aging.     

Guidelines for facilitating language development

The importance of language in the early childhood classroom cannot be overstated. All classroom activities that children engage in involve language to some extent. Those who have studied language know that it is among the most complex of human behaviors. Yet by the time children have reached the end of their third year of life, they have acquired all of the basic constructs of their native language (Brown, 1973). They have a vocabulary of literally thousands of words and comprehend many more words than they produce. They use different structures to make statements about objects or events, to ask questions, or to make requests. They use and understand small innuendos in language that may vary in meaning from context to context.Dominic F. Gullo is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.     

Categorical color coding in a one-phase avoidance procedure

Four colors (red, yellow, green, and blue) were arranged in all possible two-color sets to determine if goldfish can discriminate between color sets associated with shock and color sets associated with safety/shock omission in a one-phase (linear presentation) discrimination-learning procedure. The results showed that goldfish learned to discriminate between two-color sets if set colors were natural categorical color-code mates (red = yellow and green = blue). When natural code mates were not in the same set, and therefore were paired with different shock consequents, no discrimination learning occurred, suggesting that goldfish, unlike pigeons, are not able to code colors arbitrarily. The method also allowed a measure of preference between colors within sets associated with safety/shock omission. Original-learning preference measures between colors in sets so associated showed that goldfish chose red over any other color, yellow over blue or green, and green over blue, despite the fact that both colors in any set were procedurally identical, implying that goldfish do discriminate between colors in the absence of explicit discrimination training. The goldfish that failed to discriminate between red/blue and green/yellow sets in original learning were transferred to red/yellow and blue/green color sets. In transfer, the color paired with safety/shock omission in original learning was preferred over the color paired with shock in original learning, which resulted in a reversal of original-learning color preferences for half the goldfish. The transfer color-preference results imply that the goldfish had associated specific colors with specific shock consequents, but the associations were not robust enough to support discrimination learning in the face of categorical color coding.     

A conceptual framework for understanding children as agents in the transition from home to kindergarten

The transition from home to kindergarten, for most children, is the first and major ecological transition in their educational life. Kindergarten is the first educational setting in which children make sense about ‘school’ as a place to learn and about themselves as ‘pupils’. In this transition, children cross a cultural boundary from home to kindergarten and, in fact, they commute between the two cultural settings. In Vygotsky's view, children are active culture learners. How they cope with, and adapt to, the novel kindergarten is crucial to their ‘pupil career’ in their life‐long learning. Thus, this paper aims to provide early childhood education professionals with a framework to understand children as agents in the transition from home to kindergarten. This paper begins with a review of the concept of transition. It then presents a conceptual framework of the understanding of children as agents in the transition from home to kindergarten. Major elements of the conceptual framework are derived from sociocultural theory, and analyses of ‘rites of passage’ and ‘pupil career’. This highlights the relationships between layers of context, stages of transition, and adaptation outcomes.     

Woman and family in the African diaspora—mother and the sewing machine in Caribbean literature

‘… Miss Caroline

tell me how you spend your time

I spend all my time

around the Singer machine…’

These lines from a popular song of the nineteen forties sum up what was for many women a new reality. This paper identifies the space at the sewing machine as mother's space and the sewing machine as an important element in the psychological and financial liberation of the woman, here the Caribbean woman of the twentieth century. Evidence in support of this claim is offered predominantly from Caribbean creative writing, where artists have noted the importance of that invention in the lives of their mothers and in the achievements of their families.     

PERFORMANCE IN MATHEMATICAL PROBLEM SOLVING AS A FUNCTION OF COMPREHENSION AND ARITHMETIC SKILLS

Many factors influence a student’s performance in word (or textbook) problem solving in class. Among them is the comprehension process the pupils construct during their attempt to solve the problem. The comprehension process may include some less formal representations, based on pupils’ real-world knowledge, which support the construction of a ‘situation model’. In this study, we examine some factors related to the pupil or to the word problem itself, which may influence the comprehension process, and we assess the effects of the situation model on pupils’ problem solving performance. The sample is composed of 750 pupils of grade 6 elementary school. They were selected from 35 classes in 17 Francophone schools located in the province of Quebec, Canada. For this study, 3 arithmetic problems were developed. Each problem was written in 4 different versions, to allow the manipulation of the type of information included in the problem statement. Each pupil was asked to solve 3 problems of the same version and to complete a task that allowed us to evaluate the construction of a situation model. Our results show that pupils with weaker arithmetic skills construct different representations, based on the information presented in the problem. Also, pupils who give greater importance to situational information in a problem have greater success in solving the problem. The situation model influences pupils’ problem solving performance, but this influence depends on the type of information included in the problem statement, as well as on the arithmetic skills of each individual pupil.     

Experimental trials and ‘what works?’ in education: The case of grammar for writing

The place of evidence to inform educational effectiveness has received increasing attention internationally in the last two decades. An important contribution to evidence‐informed policy has been greater attention to experimental trials including randomised controlled trials (RCTs). The aim of this paper is to examine the use of evidence, particularly the use of evidence from experimental trials, to inform national curriculum policy. To do this the teaching of grammar to help pupils’ writing was selected as a case. Two well‐regarded and influential experimental trials that had a significant effect on policy, and that focused on the effectiveness of grammar teaching to support pupils’ writing, are examined in detail. In addition to the analysis of their methodology, the nature of the two trials is also considered in relation to other key studies in the field of grammar teaching for writing and a recently published robust RCT. The paper shows a significant and persistent mismatch between national curriculum policy in England and the robust evidence that is available with regard to the teaching of writing. It is concluded that there is a need for better evidence‐informed decisions by policy makers to ensure a national curriculum specification for writing that is more likely to have positive impact on pupils.     

Causal Effects of Parent Number Talk on Preschoolers’ Number Knowledge

Individual differences in children’s number knowledge arise early and are associated with variation in parents’ number talk. However, there exists little experimental evidence of a causal link between parent number talk and children’s number knowledge. Parent number talk was manipulated by creating picture books which parents were asked to read with their children every day for 4 weeks. N = 100 two- to four-year olds and their parents were randomly assigned to read either Small Number (1 – 3), Large Number (4 – 6), or Control (non-numerical) books. Small Number books were particularly effective in promoting number knowledge relative to the Control books. However, children who began the study further along in their number development also benefited from reading the Large Number Books with their parents.     

Presidential Address: The academic discipline of education. Reciprocal relationships between practical knowledge and academic knowledge

This article explores the nature of education as a vital part of human knowledge. The argument that is presented addresses the critique of education as having epistemological weaknesses as an academic discipline. The argument is framed by scholarship that has categorised the discipline of education as derived from three main traditions of knowledge. In order to explore the coherence of education as a discipline, contrasts are made with other disciplines such as mathematics and sciences. The article also reviews scholarship in relation to the concept of education research that is close-to-practice, and the relevance of this to understanding education as an academic discipline. The article concludes by suggesting a new model that shows the relationships between practical knowledge and academic knowledge that are an intrinsic part of education. A more confident portrayal of education as an academic discipline is also advocated.