Children’s and adolescents’ thoughts on pollution: cognitive abilities required to understand environmental systems

Pollution phenomena are complex systems in which different parts are integrated by means of causal and temporal relationships. To understand pollution, children must develop some cognitive abilities related to system thinking and temporal and causal inferential reasoning. These cognitive abilities constrain and guide how children understand pollution processes. Hence, ascertaining whether changes among children’s ideas of pollution are related to system thinking and inferential reasoning abilities could be useful in improving environmental education. Eighty participants between 9 and 16 years old were interviewed to evaluate how children explain different aspects of pollution-related systems. From the explanations found in these interviews, three progressive epistemic structures were reconstructed. The three epistemic structures differ in the type of causal and temporal relationship established by the participants and in the mechanisms that the participants used to relate the pollutant to its effects.     

No place to call home: Cultural homelessness, self-esteem and cross-cultural identities

This study examined relations between a cross-cultural geographically mobile childhood and adulthood cultural homelessness, attachment to cross-cultural identities, and self esteem. Cross-cultural identities are loosely defined identities (e.g., third culture kids, military brats, missionary kids) that describe some individuals’ childhood cross-cultural experience. The 475 participants spent at least two years before age 18 in a country different from their parents’ home culture, then returned to the latter. They completed an online survey which included general demographic information regarding cross-cultural experiences in childhood, as well as the Cultural Homelessness Criteria, the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale, and items that evaluated the strength of affirmation, belonging, and commitment to a self-labeled cross-cultural identity. Cultural homelessness was related to lower self esteem scores; higher affirmation, belonging and commitment to any cross-cultural identity was related to higher self esteem and lower cultural homelessness. Furthermore, such affirmation, belonging, and commitment buffered the cultural homelessness-self esteem association, whereas just having a cross-cultural identity did not.     

Introduction to the special issue ‘How adolescents read and learn on the Web: internal and external factors (Introducción al número especial ‘Cómo leen y aprenden los adolescentes en la red: factores internos y externos’)

ABSTRACT

The World Wide Web has become a major information resource for adolescents (i.e., 10–19 years of age), offering an unprecedented amount of information on virtually any topic. While the Web can potentially offer new learning opportunities, it also presents several challenges. Reading and learning on the Web requires a set of advanced literacy skills that adolescents do not necessarily possess and need to develop in order to effectively deal with the complexity of information encountered online. This special issue brings together five empirical articles and a discussion paper that examine internal and external factors that are beneficial (or detrimental) to adolescents’ reading and learning on the Web, and contribute to explaining how young learners develop complex literacy skills. Theoretically, the special issue contributes to the conceptualization of what researchers refer to as ‘multiple documents literacy’. In practice, it informs researchers and educators of emerging empirical results regarding adolescents’ information behaviour, as well as on instructional strategies that can be effective for developing adolescents’ literacy skills.     

Effects of virtual learning environments: A scoping review of literature

Education and Information Technologies - The purpose of this scoping review is to isolate and investigate the existing data and research that identifies if the synchronous face-to-face visual...     

The parent as learner: Early childhood parent programs

Early childhood parent programs have evolved from family‐oriented trends in the helping professions and a strong belief in the educational potential of early experiences. Recent conceptions of parents during the early years emphasize their role in providing educational experiences and the relationships of parents with programs and schools. In a variety of disciplines early education and treatment programs for children now focus on the behavior of the parent in relation to the young child. The parent is a learner; goals, strategies, and curriculum planning include family members as well as the child. Yet, clarification of parent and professional roles has proceeded slowly. This article describes the development and content of these programs, emerging theory, and implications concerning the child‐parent‐professional relationship.     

现代火葬的出现与亡者的作业

欧洲在19世纪末才开始实行火葬,在技术先进的焚化炉中,通过燃烧使尸体迅速地化为灰烬。但当时火葬的出现很难被解释为科学发展的结果或经济上的必要,也无法归因于对死亡的新观念。只有将现代火葬置于和其他文化实践或政治主张的各种同构关系中,才能将其中的多重意义在一组组关系中展现开来。     

‘Where do I go from here?’: learning to become activist teachers through a community of practice

Background: Student-Centered Inquiry as Curriculum (SCIC) is an activist approach [Oliver, K. L., and H. A. Oesterreich. 2013. Student-Centered Inquiry as Curriculum as a Model for Field-Based Teacher Education. Journal of Curriculum Studies 45 (3): 394–417. doi:10.1080/00220272.2012.719550] inspired by years of research with youth. It was designed as a means of listening and responding to youth in order to better facilitate students’ interest, motivation, and learning in physical education settings. While we have a strong and growing body of activist research with youth in physical education, SCIC as a specific approach to working with youth is in its infancy; thus, there is a need to further explore the challenges teachers/researchers face learning to use this approach to teaching.

Purpose: This study explores how educators, in different contexts, learn to use an activist approach called SCIC, in order to better facilitate students’ interest, motivation, and learning in physical education and physical activity settings.

Research setting and participants: Participants included a university professor, a college instructor, a postdoctoral student, a doctoral student, and a pre-service teacher. Data were collected between January and May 2016.

Data collection and analysis: Data collection included weekly field notes and debriefings following observations, teacher artifacts, weekly collaborative group meetings, and two individual interviews per teaching participant.

Discussion and conclusions: The main challenge that emerged was learning how to move from a theoretical understanding of student-centered pedagogy to the practice of student-centered pedagogy. Specifically, the amount of time that was necessary to build a foundation that allowed for student and teacher understanding, respect, and comfort, negotiating teacher and student assumptions that were embedded in the status quo of physical education (PE), and the struggle to gather and use meaningful data to guide pedagogical decisions. We negotiated these challenges through our professional learning community whereby we worked to all be able to see and name what was happening in our individual classes and collectively planned what was needed to move forward through these challenges.