Play as the Leading Activity of the Preschool Period: Insights from Vygotsky, Leont'ev, and Bakhtin

Cultural-historical psychology identifies play as the leading activity in preschool development. Vygotsky's (1967, 1978) seminal work outlined two categories of leading influences: play makes a foundational contribution to the development of semiotic mediation, and it involves active appropriation of social roles and rules and other integral aspects of social organization. Leont'ev's (1981) concept of appropriation and Bakhtin's (1981) concepts of heteroglossia and ideological becoming are used to elaborate and extend Vygotsky's original work, particularly with regard to creativity in preschool play. The paper concludes with a consideration of the pedagogical implications of the cultural-historical view on play, including the use of play to cultivate understanding of the arbitrary nature of signs and the appropriation of the social roles and organizational patterns of society.     

Curriculum Design of a Flipped Classroom to Enhance Haematology Learning

A common trend in higher education is the “flipped” classroom, which facilitates active learning during class. The flipped approach to teaching was instituted in a haematology ‘major’ class and the students’ attitudes and preferences for the teaching materials were surveyed. The curriculum design was explicit and involved four major components (1) the preparation of the students; (2) the weekly pre-class work; (3) the in-class active learning strategies and (4) closing the learning loop using formative quizzes. Each of these components is discussed in detail and was informed by sound pedagogical strategies. Several different sources of information and several freely available software tools to engage the students are discussed. Two iterations are reported here, with improved pass rate for the final examination from 47 to 48 % in the traditional class to 56–65 % in the flipped classroom approach. The majority of students (93 and 89 %) came to the class prepared, after viewing the screencasts and engaged fully with the activities within the face-to-face time. The students perceived that solving case studies (93 %) was the most beneficial activity for their learning and this was closely followed by the production of essay plans (71 %). The majority of students recommended that this approach be repeated the following year (69 and 75 %).     

A Methylome‐Wide Association Study of Trajectories of Oppositional Defiant Behaviors and Biological Overlap With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

In 671 mother–child (49% male) pairs from an epidemiological birth cohort, we investigated (a) prospective associations between DNA methylation (at birth) and trajectories (ages 7–13) of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), and the ODD subdimensions of irritable and headstrong; (b) common biological pathways, indexed by DNA methylation, between ODD trajectories and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); (c) genetic influence on DNA methylation; and (d) prenatal risk exposure associations. Methylome‐wide significant associations were identified for the ODD and headstrong, but not for irritable. Overlap analysis indicated biological correlates between ODD, headstrong, and ADHD. DNA methylation in ODD and headstrong was (to a degree) genetically influenced. DNA methylation associated with prenatal risk exposures of maternal anxiety (headstrong) and cigarette smoking (ODD and headstrong).     

Entrepreneurship Education and Lower Socioeconomic Black Youth: An Empirical Investigation

This study tested the effects of an entrepreneurship education intervention, the New Youth Entrepreneur curriculum, on lower socioeconomic black high-school students' knowledge of basic and advanced concepts in entrepreneurship. Ninety-five high school sophomores (over 85% black) from a lower socioeconomic neighborhood made up the sample for the experimental design: 51 in the treatment group and 44 in the control group. The two instruments used measured participants' knowledge of basic entrepreneurship concepts and higher cognitive levels of entrepreneurship learning, including comprehension, application, and analysis. The treatment group experienced the New Youth Entrepreneur (NYE) curriculum for one period a day for a semester, while the control group was exposed to basic entrepreneurship concepts at an awareness level as part of a general business education course. It was predicted and found that the treatment group significantly outperformed the control group on all dimensions of entrepreneurship tested. The study results confirm that appropriate curricular innovation can significantly influence the acquisition of entrepreneurship concepts and skills by lower socioeconomic black students. They also confirm that these same students can even be energized to the point of moving from opportunity recognition to initial business implementation.     

Wordless books: An approach to visual literacy

This is a story about a bear named Goldilocks, and a family of people called The Three Bears. What I mean is that this story is sort of likeGoldilocks and the Three Bears, but the opposite. Get it? Well listen to my story and you'll understand.     

Indian child welfare: A community team approach to protective services

The purpose of this study is threefold: first, to describe the characteristics of child abuse and neglect on a major Indian reservation; second, to examine the impact of a community team approach to child abuse and neglect as measured by the incidence of reported abuse and neglect and admissions for emergency foster care; and third, to make recommendations for actions to close the gaps in child welfare services to Indian children living on reservations.     

Virtual Reality Simulation: Effects on Academic Performance Within Two Domains of Writing in Science

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role textbooks can play on writing complexity and lexical density as a proxy for critical thinking and ultimately learning, in relation to argumentative and summative writing when integrated with a virtual reality experience. In this study, differences in writing complexity and lexical density scores were measured across four different pedagogical modalities: VR alone, VR followed by textbook readings, textbook readings followed by VR, and textbook readings alone. Adult students, recruited from non-science-based higher education programs, responded to two prompts related to content found in the VR environments and discussed in the textbooks. The authors hypothesized that exposure to a virtual marine environment prior to responding to the writing prompts would enhance both argumentative and summative writing products, when compared to participants who only had access to the textbook experiences. Participants who were exposed to the VR environment then a textbook demonstrated significantly greater writing complexity and lexical density scores than those who had access to VR alone, or access to the text alone.

     

Parental reactions to children's negative emotions: longitudinal relations to quality of children's social functioning

Relations between self-reported parental reactions to children's negative emotions (PNRs) and children's socially appropriate/problem behavior and negative emotionality were examined longitudinally. Evidence was consistent with the conclusion that relations between children's externalizing (but not internalizing) emotion and parental punitive reactions to children's negative emotions are bidirectional. Reports of PNRs generally were correlated with low quality of social functioning. In structural models, mother-reported problem behavior at ages 10-12 was at least marginally predicted from mother-reported problem behavior, children's regulation, and parental punitive or distress reactions. Moreover, parental distress and punitive reactions at ages 6-8 predicted reports of children's regulation at ages 8-10, and regulation predicted parental punitive reactions at ages 10-12. Father reports of problem behavior at ages 10-12 were predicted by earlier problem behavior and parental distress or punitive reactions; some of the relations between regulation and parental reactions were similar to those in the models for mother-reported problem behavior. Parental perceptions of their reactions were substantially correlated over 6 years. Some nonsupportive reactions declined in the early to mid-school years, but all increased into late childhood/early adolescence.     

Developmental arrest at the logographic stage: impaired literacy functions in Klinefelter's XXXY syndrome

We report an analysis of reading and spelling processes in a case of developmental disability associated with a genetic anomaly (Klinefelter XXXY syndrome). The results are interpreted within the framework of a model of reading and spelling development (Frith, 1985). An almost complete absence of alphabetic functions was noted. Reading appeared to be based on a ‘logographic lexicon’ (Seymour & Elder, 1986), and spelling on a letter sequence generator which was modifiable by access to a limited store of word images.