The Emotionally Intelligent Early Childhood Educator: Self-Reflective Journaling

A current interest in education is the growing awareness that the development of social and emotional skills in children is critical for the foundation of academic knowledge in the classroom. The early childhood educator is in a position to be a powerful nurturer of the social emotional development in young children. It is important, therefore, to challenge early childhood teachers, particularly veteran teachers, to take a closer look at their own social and emotional skills and to systematically reassess these skills through an emotionally intelligent “lens”. The field of emotional intelligence is a new and exciting area of academic research that looks at emotional abilities within the following four domains: (1) perception skills; (2) accessing skills; (3) understanding skills; and (4) regulation skills. This article presents a userfriendly methodology to assess and enhance the emotional intelligence abilities of teachers, and thereby impact the abilities of the young children they teach.     

Positive and negative successive contrast effects following multiple shifts in reward magnitude under high drive and immediate reinforcement

Multiple shifts in reward amount were given to rats in a straight runway. Both positive and negative contrast effects were observed. A positive contrast effect was observed, however, only if the shift from small to large reward occurred while the subject was evidencing a negative contrast effect. Implications for current conceptions of reinforcement contrast are discussed.     

Children's temperament and behavior problems predict their employed mothers' work functioning

Numerous studies have been conducted on the impact of dual-earner parents' employment on their children, yet the reverse process-the impact of children and their behavior on the work functioning of their parents-has been ignored. This study investigated spillover from the mother role to the work role in a sample of more than 300 families. At 4 months, 12 months, 3.5 years, and 4.5 years of age, child's difficult temperament was significantly associated with mother's work outcomes, including work role quality and rewards from combining work and family. The evidence was consistent with a structural model in which maternal sense of parenting competence and maternal depressed affect mediated these effects.     

Formative Automated Computer Testing (FACT)

This study describes the context for the development of a tool to formatively assess information technology skills of students. The tool provides a reliable and valid assessment of word processing competency, utilizing automation to apply the test instrument via the Microsoft Office package. Tests can be designed directly by tutors, and delivered via a network. Evaluation of the tests suggests that immediate automated testing is preferred by students compared to a traditional written test. There is evidence that the tool improves the IT skills of its users, whereas a traditional written test has no such beneficial effect.     

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Riding, Richard & Rayner, Steven (1998) Cognitive styles and learning strategies David Fulton (London) ISBN 1-85346-480-5 213 pp £19
http://www.fultonpublishers.co.uk orders@fultonpublishers.co.uk     

Netskills and the current state of beliefs and practices in student learning: an assessment and recommendations

This article analyses data from over 1000 student questionnaires dealing with how students currently use the web to support their learning. It discusses student understanding, needs, and expectations of the web and the overwhelming perception that the web now forms an integral part of their study and research practices. However, these practices require greater definition and refinement for and by the student. Evidence from some teaching staff is compared with that from students for validation purposes and has also revealed striking differences in perception and attitudes between the two groups. We identify specific needs on the part of most students in our survey who require greater guidance and study skills when using the web. These “Netskills” are described and recommendations are made concerning their acquisition and future development by students who are demanding that such skills become part of their own learning strategies.     

Fostering Distributed Science Learning Through Collaborative Technologies

TACTICS (French and Spanish acronym standing for Collaborative Work and Learning in Science with Information and Communications Technologies) is an ongoing project aimed at investigating a distributed community of learning and practice in which information and communications technologies (ICT) take the role of collaborative tools to support social construction of knowledge. This community is composed of researchers, graduate students, and high-school teachers and their students, from six schools and four universities in Canada and Mexico. It set out in fall 2000 to develop a community around the general topic of integrating concepts in science school subjects. Once a prototype community is established, it can become a terrain where different aspects could be studied. Subsequently, researchers could gradually take a back seat allowing as well as ensuring the autonomy of the school members involved and, thereby, the viability of the learning community. The set up of the proposed prototype distributed science learning community was therefore an essential yet far from trivial first step. This paper discusses the process of setting up the community and the lessons learned.     

Educating students with FASD: linking policy,research and practice

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD ) is a prevalent neurodevelopmental disability with significant implications for learning and behaviour. International research suggests that the prevalence of FASD in school‐aged children is 2.3–6.3%. In this paper, we address the questions: (1) what is FASD ; (2) what is the prevalence of FASD in schools; (3) what is the impact of FASD ; and (4) why develop special FASD education strategies and programmes? We summarise the 18‐year history of W innipeg S chool D ivision's development of its FASD P rogramme of services, describe the specialised FASD classrooms and then present the results from a consensus‐generating workshop comprised of 36 FASD education professionals, with over 209 years of collective FASD education programme experience, who were asked to identify and reach consensus on best strategies and lessons learned in FASD education programmes. We then suggest that effectively educating children with FASD is critical to get right if positive educational outcomes are to be realised.     

The impact of individual forms of childhood maltreatment on health behavior

OBJECTIVE: This study examines the unique contribution of five types of maltreatment (sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect) to adult health behaviors as well as the additive impact of exposure to different types of childhood maltreatment. METHOD: Two hundred and twenty-one women recruited from a VA primary care clinic completed questionnaires assessing exposure to childhood trauma and adult health behaviors. Regression models were used to test the relationship between childhood maltreatment and adult health behaviors. RESULTS: Sexual and physical abuse appear to predict a number of adverse outcomes; when other types of maltreatment are controlled, however, sexual abuse and physical abuse do not predict as many poor outcomes. In addition, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and emotional neglect in childhood were all related to different adult health behaviors. The more types of childhood maltreatment participants were exposed to the more likely they were to have problems with substance use and risky sexual behaviors in adulthood. IMPLICATIONS: The results indicate that it is important to assess a broad maltreatment history rather than trying to relate specific types of abuse to particular adverse health behaviors or health outcomes.