The role of aggression and social competence in children's perceptions of the child–teacher relationship

The role of children's aggression and three indices of social competence (peer‐preferred behavior, teacher‐preferred behavior, and school adjustment) in children's perceived relationships with their teachers was assessed. Participants were 1,432 third through fifth graders (688 males, 744 females) and their teachers. The results from hierarchical regression analyses showed statistically significant interaction effects. Poor school adjustment was associated with more negatively perceived child teacher relationships for boys than for girls. In addition, the perceived child–teacher relationship among aggressive children was more favorable among those with high levels of school adjustment than among those who were poorly adjusted at school. Implications for school psychologists and teachers are discussed. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

An Approach to Writing Non-fiction

There is plenty of evidence that non-fiction writing tends to have been neglected until quite recently. David Wray and Maureen Lewis discuss the importance of extending the range of children's writing and go on to introduce the use of writing frames, a strategy for scaffolding children's non-fiction writing. This strategy has been extensively trialled as part of the Exeter Extending Literacy Project and does seem to offer some worthwhile benefits in writing development.     

Integrating formative evaluation into a learner-centred revision course

This article describes a learner-centred course which ran in summer 1988. It was ostensibly a revision exercise, using computer assisted learning (CAL), but an element of formative evaluation was deliberately built into the process, making it contribute to our systematic review and development of our teaching. Our aim was to take snapshots of learning at different stages, through a short but intensive revision class in mathematics for engineering and science undergraduates at a Scottish university
The CALM Project—Computer Aided Learning in Mathematics—has produced 2 5 software units to enhance the teaching of calculus to large groups of undergraduates. The CALM software was piloted by one group of students and a formative evaluation of the packages has been reported elsewhere (Beevers et al 1987, Beevers et al 1988a). This revision course enabled us to confirm many of the previous evaluation findings on the CALM software; we also discovered that a round-up session on problem-solving is an important and integral part of the learning process. The evaluation proved useful to us as teachers of mathematics, and has already influenced the future development of our CAL work.     

Social and Emotional Competencies: Contributions to Young African-American Children's Peer Acceptance

This study explored the relation between measures of emotional competence, behavioral regulation, and general social competence and African-American preschoolers' peer acceptance and popularity. These children came from both lower and middle income families. Data were collected in a short-term longitudinal study following children over the course of a school year. Gender, emotion knowledge, emotion regulation, and themes of violence in response to hypothetical situations of interpersonal conflict were strongly related to peer acceptance. The results are consistent with findings from middle-class Caucasian samples. The results also highlight the importance of potential influences of context and setting on children's peer status as well as the need for greater understanding of within- group variability with regard to these constructs. Given the growing evidence that peer relationships are related in important ways to children's school adjustment, understanding the development of positive peer relationships may help shed light on ways to help children achieve at more optimal levels in the school context.     

Is it misspelled or is it mispelled? The influence of fresh orthographic information on spelling

The effect of exposure to incorrectly and correctly spelled words on subsequent spelling performance was examined as a function of spelling proficiency and of time lapse between exposure and test. Spelling accuracy was found to be respectively depressed and enhanced by such exposure, relative to performance on unexposed control words. The effect was persistent and pervasive, obtaining at both immediate and one-week delayed testing and in both good and poor spellers. The findings indicate that fresh orthographic information exerts an influence on pre-existing abstract orthographic representations, rather than establishing new episodic traces, and that this process takes place implicitly.     

Spongelike acquisition of sight vocabulary in beginning readers?

We report two training studies designed to investigate the relation between phonological awareness, sound‐to‐letter mapping knowledge, and printed word learning in novice five‐year‐old readers. Effects of visual memory and of teaching methods are also explored. In our first study, novice five‐year‐old readers able to segment initial phonemes and with good knowledge of mappings between sounds and letters learned words more easily from repeated exposure to texts. Results suggested that visual memory influenced word learning in non‐segmenting but not in segmenting children. Spelling regularity did not affect ease of learning. Nouns were easier to learn than function words. In the second study, although phonological awareness and sound‐to‐letter mapping knowledge still exerted a significant influence, all novice five‐year‐olds were able to learn words more easily if these were taught out‐of‐context singly on flashcards. Results support the view that mental representations of printed words are more easily formed by beginners who are able to match at least some of the phonological segments detected in the spoken word to letters in the printed word.     

Affective Outcomes of Cooperative Learning in Social Studies

This paper reports an experimental study involving the use of cooperative learning in a social studies classroom. The outcome variables discussed in the paper are pupil self-esteem and classroom climate. Over the period of the study, cooperative learning did not significantly improve the self-esteem of the pupils. However, pupils in the experimental group who were taught through the cooperative learning approach perceived classwork to be less difficult than the control pupils who worked individually. The control pupils also reported a decline in satisfaction with classwork and perceived more friction in their class. Interviews with the teacher and pupils showed favourable attitudes toward cooperative learning.     

Form-Function Correspondences in Children's Inference

Perceptual similarity among concept members has been viewed as inadequate to motivate concept formation. Instead, it has been argued that intuitive beliefs about the world offer more structured motivation for concepts. Our research explores children's beliefs about the relations between perceptually based similarity among things and their predicted behaviors. We focus on form-function correspondences as fundamental components of very young children's belief systems. Groups of 2- and 4-year-old children were asked to choose which of 2 line-drawn animals evidenced a particular "function," a special behavior. Even the youngest children showed sensitivity to form-function correspondences by selecting the animal whose form afforded the particular function. A second study investigated how form-function correspondences affect the relative influences of perceptual similarity and shared labels over patterns of children's inference. Perceptual similarity, if "motivated" by intuitive beliefs about correspondences between form and function, was found to be sufficient basis for inference and a more robust basis than shared labels when children attributed meaningful functions to novel animal forms.     

Family Science Talk in Museums: Predicting Children's Engagement From Variations in Talk and Activity

Children's developing reasoning skills are better understood within the context of their social and cultural lives. As part of a research–museum partnership, this article reports a study exploring science‐relevant conversations of 82 families, with children between 3 and 11 years, while visiting a children's museum exhibit about mammoth bones, and in a focused one‐on‐one exploration of a “mystery object.” Parents' use of a variety of types of science talk predicted children's conceptual engagement in the exhibit, but interestingly, different types of parent talk predicted children's engagement depending on the order of the two activities. The findings illustrate the importance of studying children's thinking in real‐world contexts and inform creation of effective real‐world science experiences for children and families.     

Speaking and listening in the primary curriculum: some themes and their impact

In a previous phase of a project based in a group of UK primary schools, speaking and listening was found to be an effective focus for improved learning across the curriculum and for teachers’ professional development. At the project's second stage and in the light of recently changed Department for Education guidelines, these findings have been extended to exploration of strategies in the development of pupils’ communicative skills and the potential value of these when transferred to other, cross-curricular contexts. Teachers’ perspectives have again been considered, in terms of their ability to manage the strategies but also of the impact on their views of themselves and their role. Data in the form of transcribed classroom recordings, observations and interviews, plus teachers’ diaries and pupils’ work, have been analysed for these purposes. They show that the skills in question can indeed be taught and will transfer across contexts when teaching is of a ‘dialogic’ character.