A cultural lens on Yucatec Maya families’ COVID-19 experiences

Health guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic led families around the world to spend more time isolated together, disrupting leisure activities, schooling, social interactions, and family work (UNICEF, 2021). Using the lens of Yucatec Maya families’ cultural values and practices, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 Yucatec Maya rural women in Mexico (M_age = 32; and for comparison, 13 middle-class European-American women (M_age = 41)), with children 6–7 years old, to analyze families’ experiences during the pandemic. Faced with the same isolation as in the United States, our exploratory analysis revealed Maya families experienced external stresses but at the same time were generally comfortable with their children's everyday activities and their social-emotional well-being, illuminating consequences of the communities’ cultural theories about development.     

Data‐driven refinements of a genetics learning progression

Learning progressions are theoretical models that describe learning of scientific ideas and practices over time. These hypothetical progressions need to be tested and refined in order to productively inform instruction and assessment. In this paper, we report our attempts to revise a learning progression in genetics. In particular, we focused on two constructs that embody core ideas in classical genetics and one molecular construct. The revisions are based on analysis of pre‐ and postinterview data obtained from sixty 11th grade students before and after they engaged in a 10‐week unit that addressed these concepts. We found that while many of the students held ideas that aligned with the progression, there were several distinct dimensions of student reasoning that were not captured and led to substantial revisions of the constructs including: (a) the splitting of the construct dealing with meiosis (E) into two subconstructs (E1‐physical passage of genetic information and E2 – the role of sex cells), (b) the addition of new levels to constructs dealing with the universal nature and organization of the genetic code (A) and construct (F). For Construct A, the lower levels were expanded to include ideas about the localization of DNA in cells and to include ideas about the composition of DNA that were not captured in the progression. Revisions to Construct F included the expansion of existing levels and the addition of modes of inheritance such as codominance and incomplete dominance. The research we present offers insights about a methodological approach that can be used to test and refine progressions, as well as insights about student learning in genetics as we further describe and expand the stepping‐stone ideas in the progression and discuss further the multidimensional nature of learning progressions.     

Dispute, dissent and the place of health promotion in a "disrupted tradition" of health improvement

Dispute over the nature and purpose of health promotion has characterized the development of this field of activity in recent times. This paper explores such disputes and offers an explanation for them. I argue that health promotion and related fields (such as public health and health education) share in a "disrupted tradition." I assert that "health promotion" can be seen as the term presently favored by some to represent an extensive "tradition of protecting and improving the health of the public." Its relative favor and currency can be ascribed to a degree of power shift between competing groups operating with separate conceptions of health, away from biomedicine and towards more socially rooted understanding. Relative degrees of power and influence possessed by these groups at different historical times have contributed to the "disruption" of the tradition. Understanding this disruption helps explain a number of historiographical and theoretical problems besetting the field.     

The Importance of Making the Well-Being of Children in Poverty a Priority

Hurricane Katrina exposed to the world the side of America that is often ignored or forgotten—the side of America where people live in poverty and struggle to meet their most basic needs. This article focuses primarily on children in Mississippi and highlights the effect that poverty has on children’s well-being at an early age and future academic success. It also provides evidence for the importance of funding high-quality pre-k programs and parental training to ensure they begin the process of preparing their children for success, not only in Mississippi but in the other states that are leaving their children behind. Finally, with the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind in 2007, recommendations are made for refocusing the premise of the law from accountability and high stakes testing to meeting the needs of all children so they can truly be successful in school.     

Rhymes and phonemes in the common unit task: replications and implications for beginning reading

Theorists and practitioners in the field of reading development are currently debating the importance of rhymes and phonemes in beginning reading. In a recent study, Duncan, Seymour and Hill (1997) provided evidence that explicit or meta- awareness of sound is closely linked to reading strategy. Meta-awareness was measured by asking beginning readers to identify the ‘common unit’ shared by two spoken words. Results showed that meta-awareness of phonemes emerged prior to meta-awareness of rhyme, and that reading strategy followed a similar small-to-large progression. This study reports on a replication of the ‘common unit’ task which includes modifications to the original procedure (randomisation of conditions, increased practice, removal of positional references from instructions). The results confirm the pattern observed in the original study. Beginning readers learning by a mixed method can identify shared phonemes but not shared rimes in the common unit task. The implications of this and similar replications are discussed.     

Modeling the impacts of child care quality on children's preschool cognitive development

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care compared 3 statistical methods that adjust for family selection bias to test whether child care type and quality relate to cognitive and academic skills. The methods included: multiple regression models of 54-month outcomes, change models of differences in 24- and 54-month outcomes, and residualized change models of 54-month outcomes adjusting for the 24-month outcome. The study was unable to establish empirically which model best adjusted for selection and omitted-variable bias. Nevertheless, results suggested that child care quality predicted cognitive outcomes at 54 months, with effect sizes of .04 to .08 for both infant and preschool ages. Center care during preschool years also predicted outcomes across all models.     

The development of subjective group dynamics: children's judgments of normative and deviant in-group and out-group individuals

A developmental model of subjective group dynamics suggests that social identity is sustained first by intergroup biases and later by intragroup biases. In this study 476 English children 5 to 11 years old evaluated the English and German soccer teams, and judged in-group or out-group members whose attitudes toward the teams was normative versus antinormative. Children of all ages expressed intergroup bias. Differential evaluation against in-group deviants and in favor of out-group deviants strengthened with age. Understanding of targets' relative acceptability (differential inclusion) among in-group and out-group members mediated the effects of age and intergroup bias on intragroup bias. Identification with the in-group moderated the effects only among older children.