Social Interactions in Preschool Classrooms and the Development of Young Children's Conceptions of the Personal

Two studies examined preschool teacher and child interactions regarding personal, moral, and social-conventional issues in the classroom and the development of personal concepts in young children. In Study 1, 20 preschool classrooms, 10 with 3-year-olds and 10 with 4-year-olds, were observed to assess children's and teachers' interactions regarding personal, moral, social-conventional, and mixed events. Teachers used more direct messages regarding moral and social-conventional events than personal and mixed events. Teachers offered children choices, but they rarely negotiated personal events with children. Children responded with personal choice assertions when adults offered them choices, but adults did not differ in the frequency that they negated or affirmed children's assertions of personal choice. In Study 2, 120 preschool children, nearly evenly divided between males and females at 3, 4, and 5 years of age, were interviewed regarding their conceptions of personal events in the classroom and home. With age, children judged that they should retain control over personal decisions in both contexts. In both judgments and social interactions, teachers and children identified a personal domain in which children can and should make choices about how to structure their activities and assert their independence in the classroom.     

Challenges and possibilities in climate change education

Educating and communicating about climate change is challenging. Researchers reported that climate change concepts are often misunderstood. Some people do not believe that climate change will have impacts on their own life. Other challenges may include people＇s difficulty in perceiving small or gradual environmental changes, the fact that overconsumption brings people power and recognition, people＇s weak connection to nature, and people＇s tendency to make emotional decisions and quickly solve environmental problems. Drawn from research, some climate change communication and education strategies are presented. Well designed environmental messages could convince people that they can still reduce the scale of the phenomenon and could link mitigation actions to people＇s positive desires or aspirations, while providing local examples of climate change impacts and illustrated information. In mitigation education, some strategies （future education, reflective, experiential, socio-constructivist approaches and the community of change）, jointly used, could correct the learners＇ misconceptions and lead them to action. In adaptation education, scientists and citizens could get together to choose a specific problem that may worsen with climate change, analyze it, and propose and implement adaptations. In the meantime, pedagogical strategies inspired by cognitive science could strengthen the citizens＇ skills： posing and solving problems, decision-making, scenario building and sustainable planning.     

A Developmental Neuroscience Study of Moral Decision Making Regarding Resource Allocation

Distinguishing between equity and equality is essential when making social and moral decisions, yet the related neurodevelopmental processes are unknown. Evaluations of contextually based third‐party distributions incorporating recipient need and resource importance were examined in children and adolescents (N = 82; 8–16 years). Spatiotemporal neurodynamic responses show distinct developmental profiles to viewing such distributions. Event‐related potentials (ERPs) differentially predicted real‐life behaviors based on age, where older children's (8–10 years) evaluations were related to a fairly rapid, automatic ERP component (early posterior negativity), whereas adolescent and preadolescent (11–16 years) evaluations, first‐person allocations, and prosocial behaviors were predicted by later, cognitively controlled ERP components (P3 and late positive potential). Together, these results reveal age‐related changes regarding the neural responses that correspond to distributive justice decisions.     

The Lived Experiences of Men in a Master's Counseling Program

Using phenomenological methodology, the authors explored the experiences of 11 men in a master's‐level counseling program. Participants described the challenges and advantages of being a minority in number, being in a relational environment, and having an awareness of a patriarchal system. These findings suggest the importance of counselor educator awareness of the unique barriers male students face.     

Dimensions of higher education and the public good in South Africa

The focus is on the micro-possibilities of student capabilities formation as the end of public-good higher education, rather than on a systems or organizations approach more commonly found in discussions of the public good and higher education. This does not discount other valuable public-good ends. Using South Africa as a global South context, a capability-based approach to the public good of higher education is proposed for its humanizing ethic, attention to fair opportunities, and participation in terms of what students are able to do and to be in and through higher education. A capability frame is complemented by thinking about decoloniality and epistemic justice to help identify central higher education capabilities. The three proposed intersecting capability dimensions are as follows: personhood self-formation, epistemic contribution, and sufficiency of economic resources, intended to guide university practices and policy interventions in the direction of the public good. By populating the space of the public good with capabilities, a shift is made away from micro-economics which see the public good as a reductionist space of commodities and human capital development. Higher education is rather understood as having both instrumental and intrinsic value, generating an alternative logic to that of neo-liberalism, and an individualist ontology of competition and untrammeled markets. The pressures of the global context are acknowledged so that the public good is understood as both “ideal-aspirational” but also “practical-feasible” in the light of local South African conditions. An expanded capability-based framing would contribute to reducing higher education inequalities as a public-good and public-accountable contribution by universities.     

Equity-based sustainability and ecocentric management: Creating more ecologically just sport organization practices

Recognizing the shared responsibility all entities with a vested interest in keeping the Earth habitable possess, the authors propose ways in which sport organizations can take action by incorporating ecocentric management principles within their organizational practices and thus become more ecologically just. First, by drawing upon the tenets of the systems thinking paradigm and the four levels of thinking model, the underlying beliefs and values guiding current practices within sport organizations are identified. Next, the authors offer a series of propositions to suggest that by adopting an equity-based perspective, recognizing the interdependent relationships between humans and the natural environment, and acknowledging the manner in which sport organizations hinder the opportunities of the natural environment to thrive, sport organizations can contribute to the health of the planet and all of its inhabitants through their own organizational practices. Additionally, sport organizations can also serve as ecologically just exemplars for organizations in other industries to emulate.     

The link between text difficulty,reading speed and exploration of printed text during shared book reading

In the current study the reading speed of the narration and the difficulty of the text was manipulated and links were explored with children’s attention to the printed text in shared book reading. Thirty-nine children (24 grade 1 and 15 grade 2) were presented easy and difficult books at slow (syllable by syllable) or fast (adult reading speed) pace while their eye movements were monitored. Results revealed an interaction between speed and difficulty. For the easy and difficult books, children spent more time and made more fixations on the printed text when it was presented at slow speed than at fast speed. However, at fast speed, children spend more time and made more fixations on the text of the easy rather than the difficult books, but at slow speed no difference was observed. In addition, at slow speed positive correlations were observed between attention to print and letter knowledge and word reading skills. Results provide important information for the practice of shared book reading suggesting that to increase attention to print, speed should be reduced. Future research should investigate the role of reading speed on reading related outcomes such as discourse comprehension and children’s interest in reading activities.     

Conflict Resolution in Preschool Social Interactions

Conflict has frequently been hypothesized to play an important role in development, and yet, until recently, little empirical work has been conducted on preschoolers' social conflicts. The aim of this study was to investigate the types of social issues that produce conflicts, the extent to which children respond positively to protests from others, and how conflicts are resolved. Children were observed in two contexts: semi-structured peer groups in which adults did not intervene, and school-time free-play. The results showed that even when adults do not intervene, children are often responsive to protests from others and resolve conflicts on their own. Differences were also observed for the types of issues that generate conflicts in the two settings and the types of conflicts that children respond to most often. These results indicate that children's conflicts are not solely negative or aggressive and that children's social interactions and their social contexts are multi-dimensional. The findings point to interpersonal aspects of settings, such as the differential role of adults and peers, and to contextual features of settings, such as free-play and sustained play, that should be considered by teachers and parents when structuring social interactive opportunities for young children.