Observations of Children's Task Activities and Social Interactions in Relation to Teacher Perceptions in a Child-Centered Preschool: Are We Leaving Too Much to Chance?

The goal of the present study was to describe one center's interpretation of childcentered instruction and what this looked like in terms of the children's daily activities, social affiliation, and behavior in the classrooms. Staff at a self-identified child-centered constructivist preschool program were interviewed about their pedagogical philosophy and asked to give their estimates of the proportion of time that children in their classrooms spent both interacting with different people (alone, with peer, with teacher) and engaged in various behaviors. Data were collected pertaining to children's goal-directed, sustained activities, social affiliation, affect expression, and inappropriate/aggressive behavior via 2,752 naturalistic classroom observations over the course of a semester. Results indicate children a) spent significantly less time engaging in focused, goal-directed, learning activities, b) sustained their attention on one activity for significantly smaller lengths of time, c) expressed overt positive affect considerably less often, and d) had significantly less one-on-one teacher-child interaction, than was believed and desired by the staff. Results were consistent with both a fear expressed by the center director and recent calls from researchers in early childhood education, that teachers in many child-centered constructivist early childhood programs may be committing the "early childhood error" by stepping back and refraining from getting directly involved in children's activities.     

Maternal employment and parent-infant interaction at one year

The purpose of this study was to ask if parent-infant interaction differs in middle-class families with employed and homemaker mothers. Home observations of mother, father, and infant were carried out on weekday evenings, and observations of mother and infant as a dyad were performed during the daytime. Findings indicated group differences in the mother-father-infant context only, in which infants in the homemaker-mother group smiled and laughed more and were engaged more often in mutual looking and object play. Furthermore, daughters in the employed-mother group, but sons in the homemaker-mother group, received more parental stimulation encouraging their attention of objects.     

Interaction Style, Problem-solving Behavior, and Family Problem-solving Effectiveness

We proposed that an individual's characteristic style of interaction will predict his or her problem-solving behavior and family problem-solving effectiveness. We test this hypothesis for mothers, fathers, and adolescent boys and girls ( M age = 12.7 years) in 431 rural families using both warm and hostile interaction styles. One set of videotape coders observed a general family discussion and measured interaction style. A year later, another, independent set of coders observed a family problem-solving task. Family members reported family problem-solving effectiveness immediately following the problem-solving task. The results indicated that a hostile interaction style directly predicted destructive problem-solving behavior and indirectly predicted family problem-solving effectiveness. A warm interaction style related directly to constructive problem-solving behavior and indirectly to family problem-solving effectiveness.     

Threading mathematics through symbols,sketches, software,silicon, and wood: Teachers produce and maintain cohesion to support STEM integration

ABSTRACT

This classroom-based investigation sought to document how, in real time, STEM teachers and students attempt to locate the invariant mathematical relations that are threaded through the range of activities and representations in these classes, and how highlighting this common thread influences student participation and learning. The authors conducted multimodal discourse analyses of teacher–student interactions during multiday observations in 3 urban high school STEM classes. The focal lessons were in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering (within Project Lead the Way), and precollege geometry. Across 3 cases, teachers and students actively built and maintained cohesion of invariant mathematical relations across activities and representations. Pre- and postlesson interviews revealed that teachers intentionally managed cohesion to provide the continuity across the curricular activities that teachers believed would promote student understanding. The findings contribute to ways of fostering STEM integration and ways of grounding abstractions to promote meaning making and transfer.     

Remote and invisible: the voices of female Indigenous educational leaders in Northern Territory remote community schools in Australia

While the literature on women and educational leadership has been addressed in substantive ways in recent years, the experiences that reflect female Australian educational leaders are rare. This article reports findings from a study of five female Indigenous principals in the Northern Territory utilising biographic narratives and foregrounds their experiences as female educational leaders in Indigenous communities. I share the views of Ribbins, P. and Gronn, P. (2013. Researching principals: context and culture in the study of leadership in schools. Asia Pacific journal of education, 20 (2), 34–45) and Dimmock, C. and Walker, A. (2005. Educational leadership: culture and diversity. London: Sage) that research and theory into educational leadership must move towards the inclusion of localised unique cultural contexts since the practice of leadership is a socially bounded process. The study reveals the daily complex roles and challenges of being a female Indigenous principal in communities that are grounded in broader Indigenous epistemologies, beliefs, and value systems yet to be fully embraced by mainstream educational leadership perspectives.     

Implementation Lessons from Six Early Head Start - Child Care Partnerships

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: This study examined the development and implementation of six Early Head Start Child Care Partnerships (EHS-CCPs), unique collaborations between EHS grantees and community-based child care partners that expand access to high-quality child care and comprehensive services for low-income infants, toddlers, and their families. Interviews and focus groups with 111 key informants identified similarities across the six EHS-CCPs in initial outreach to community partners for establishing partnerships and approaches to developing partnership agreements but variation in approaches to monitoring quality improvement activities. Benefits and challenges to partnerships for programs and families were noted. Practice or Policy: Findings suggest a need for additional guidance for EHS-CCPs on key components of implementation, including the partnership agreement process, monitoring quality improvement plans, offering support for meeting program requirements, and providing comprehensive services. For example, five of the six partnerships reported the EHS grantee led the development of their partnership agreements. While this approach was attributed to child care partners’ lack of prior experience in developing agreements, further guidance on how to engage partners collaboratively in an agreement process that better emulates the principles of authenticity and equality from the conceptual framework for collaborations in early care and education would be useful.     

Gender Bias in Guatemalan Counselor Education Students: Using an Experiential Activity as a Stimulus

This article features the implementation and outcome of an experiential activity addressing gender bias in students at three university-based Guatemalan counselor education programs. The authors present students’ thematic responses delineating expectations of gender-specific communication styles and roles. A sequence of activities and students’ reflective commentaries are included, with suggestions for counselor educators in addressing gender bias in student populations.     

Deaf college students' mathematical skills relative to morphological knowledge, reading level, and language proficiency

This study of deaf college students examined specific relationships between their mathematics performance and their assessed skills in reading, language, and English morphology. Simple regression analyses showed that deaf college students' language proficiency scores, reading grade level, and morphological knowledge regarding word segmentation and meaning were all significantly correlated with both the ACT Mathematics Subtest and National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) Mathematics Placement Test scores. Multiple regression analyses identified the best combination from among these potential independent predictors of students' performance on both the ACT and NTID mathematics tests. Additionally, the participating deaf students' grades in their college mathematics courses were significantly and positively associated with their reading grade level and their knowledge of morphological components of words.     

“It will be hard because I will have to learn lots of English”: experiences of education for children newly arrived in Australia

Educational experiences during childhood are critically important for development, but migrant children often experience unique challenges. To ameliorate these, extra training in English language – such as provided by the intensive English language programme in South Australia (IELP) – is frequently offered to children taking on English as an additional language. The present study aimed to examine the experience of transition into mainstream classes for children in the IELP, particularly in relation to their overall well-being. As such, the study utilised interviews conducted with newly arrived children in Australia aged 5–13 who were enrolled in an IELP, with interviews conducted both pre- and post-transition into mainstream primary school classes. The findings indicate that most children felt anxious prior to transition, especially regarding speaking English, but were less concerned about this once entering their new class. Making friends was considered to be difficult, but easier when there were children with whom they were familiar from other contexts or if there was another child in the class with a shared cultural or linguistic background.