Key considerations in assessing young children’s emotional competence

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a surge in evidence on preschoolers’ emotional development as crucial for both concurrent and later well-being and mental health, and for learning and academic success. Given the importance of building such strengths, assessing emotional competence skills is important to aid early childhood educators in focusing programming for individuals and classrooms. Based on these assertions, this article is structured as follows: (1) outline important issues regarding developmentally appropriate early childhood assessment, particularly of emotional competence; (2) discuss use of culturally relevant standards of attainment of such skills in assessing student progress; (3) define the skills of emotional competence; (4) describe a model leading from developmentally appropriate emotional competence skills to assessment and programming; (5) suggest some possible tools for schools to use in assessing emotional competence of young children; (6) give guidance for new measurement development, and (7) suggest needed policy and practice in this area.     

Shifting the Zone of Mediation in a Suburban New Immigrant Destination: Community Boundary Spanners and School District Policymaking

This paper explores the context of reception for immigrant students and English learners in one medium-sized suburban school district in the northeastern United States. Using qualitative methods, the authors describe how, despite a troubling context of reception emerging from a normative and political community context that harbored resentment toward the new immigrant population, a community-based organization whose members served as boundary spanners between the school district and the community helped prompt district leaders toward more equity-minded policies. Given increasing culturally and linguistically diverse student populations in suburban school districts across the United States, findings from this paper have important implications for community engagement and school district policymaking.     

STEM Bridges: Evolution of an Academic Library STEM Outreach Program

Big Orange STEM Saturday (BOSS) is a sustainable model of outreach that fosters the STEM cycle of discovery and learning experiences. Through this program, the library creates and reinforces a bridge between secondary educational experiences and higher education that facilitates the transfer of knowledge from the classroom to the world. Local high school students are able to engage with experts in several different ways to explore what STEM has to offer and to look beyond their current experiences. This approach creates a venue for STEM teaching spaces outside the school classroom for enrichment and innovation. Over the past 5 years, the variety of experiences offered at BOSS have expanded and the reputation of the program has grown. This article explores the challenges, lessons, and impact that this program has had on its constituents, with a particular focus on the impact the library can have when exploring nontraditional areas of support and outreach.     

Children like it more but don’t learn more: Effects of esthetic visual design in educational games

Little is known about what design elements in digital learning games enhance learning; especially in the case of child audiences. This study examines the effects of a learning game’s visual design on perceived attractiveness and learning outcomes. We developed two visual designs for the game: one with supposedly high esthetic value and another with a low esthetic value. Participants (children between 9 and 11 years of age, N = 53) were randomly divided into two groups. Each group interacted with their assigned version for about 20 minutes and then evaluated its visual attractiveness without knowing about the other version. Then, they evaluated the attractiveness of the complementary version. As the next step, they evaluated both versions side-by-side. During the free-choice period, children could continue playing one of the game versions or a different game. They clearly preferred the high esthetic version in evaluations (d > 0.86) and in the free-choice period (62% preferred the high esthetic version of the target game), but this did not improve their learning outcomes (comprehension: d = –0.59; transfer: d = –0.16). Possible explanations of this effect are discussed in terms of cognitive load theory and cognitive-affective theory of learning from media.     

Performative Technology Intensity and Teacher Subjectivities

Critical educational literature suggests that an increased reliance upon neoliberally inspired management technologies transforms the very foundations from which images of the ideal teacher are constructed. The purpose of this paper is to add to this literature by (i) identifying and analysing a number of theoretical qualities associated with performative technologies, and (ii) discussing how such qualities contribute to the emergence of performative teacher subjectivities. Drawing upon the findings from a qualitative interview study into the extensive use of performative technologies in a Swedish upper-secondary school, we discuss four key roles of performative technologies—referred to as territorializing, mediating, adjudicating, and subjectivizing—and the intensity by which they play out such roles. A key conclusion is that the intensity by which performative technologies territorialize, mediate, and adjudicate educational practices affects self-reflection and internalization among teachers and, hence, is important for understanding the subjectivizing role of performative technologies.     

Same Same,but Different: Word and Sentence Reading in German and English

The current study compared eye fixation patterns during word and sentence processing in a consistent and an inconsistent alphabetic orthography. German and English children as well as adults matched on word reading ability read matched sentences while their eye fixation behavior was recorded. Results indicated that German children read in a more small-unit plodder-like style with more diligent first-pass reading and less rereading. In contrast, English children read in a more large-unit explorer-like style with a greater tendency to skip words, and more regressions. It is important that these cross-linguistic processing differences largely persisted in the adult readers. Orthographic consistency thus influences both local word recognition and global sentence processing in developing and skilled readers.     

Role play simulations: The assessment of an active learning technique and comparisons with traditional lectures

Although effective teaching is focusing more on the need to use active learning techniques, the research literature regarding the efficacy of various teaching methods is inconclusive. An innovative active learning technique combining the features of role plays and simulations for an industrial psychology course is presented. Subjective reports and objective assessments of knowledge retention measured at two distinct times indicated the role play simulation is an effective teaching technique. The differential importance of active learning and passive learning (i.e., lectures) techniques for the college classroom was also examined. Finally, the application of this technique for several college courses is presented.Professor DeNeve is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University. She received a B.A. in Psychology and Theology from St. Ambrose University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her current teaching interests are focused upon the use of laserdiscs and computer-generated media in the classroom. Her primary research interests include empirical investigations of active learning techniques, quantitative research synthesis, subjective well-being, and the psychology of religion. Professor Heppner received her Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology and is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She has developed an innovative two-semester course in the Psychology Department called the Practicum in the Teaching of Psychology, in which graduate instructors teach and participate in a seminar to learn about and receive feedback on their teaching. Her research interests include pedagogical innovations, vocational development of adults, and rape prevention.     

Chafing borderlands: obstacles for science teaching and learning in preschool teacher education

Cultural Studies of Science Education - This study examines preservice preschool teachers’ university science education experience. The empirical data are from a research and intervention...