Developing Students’ Futures Thinking in Science Education

Futures thinking involves a structured exploration into how society and its physical and cultural environment could be shaped in the future. In science education, an exploration of socio-scientific issues offers significant scope for including such futures thinking. Arguments for doing so include increasing student engagement, developing students?? values discourse, fostering students?? analytical and critical thinking skills, and empowering individuals and communities to envisage, value, and work towards alternative futures. This paper develops a conceptual framework to support teachers?? planning and students?? futures thinking in the context of socio-scientific issues. The key components of the framework include understanding the current situation, analysing relevant trends, identifying drivers, exploring possible and probable futures, and selecting preferable futures. Each component is explored at a personal, local, national, and global level. The framework was implemented and evaluated in three classrooms across Years 4?C12 (8 to 16-year olds) and findings suggest it has the potential to support teachers in designing engaging science programmes in which futures thinking skills can be developed.     

What Counts? Sources of Knowledge in Children’s Acquisition of the Successor Function

Although many U.S. children can count sets by 4 years, it is not until 5½–6 years that they understand how counting relates to number—that is, that adding 1 to a set necessitates counting up one number. This study examined two knowledge sources that 3½- to 6-year-olds (N = 136) may leverage to acquire this “successor function”: (a) mastery of productive rules governing count list generation; and (b) training with “+1” math facts. Both productive counting and “+1” math facts were related to understanding that adding 1 to sets entails counting up one number in the count list; however, even children with robust successor knowledge struggled with its arithmetic expression, suggesting they do not generalize the successor function from “+1” math facts.     

The Implications of COVID-19 for Early Childhood Education in Ethiopia: Perspectives from Parents and Caregivers

Early Childhood Education Journal - Recent research on the effects of COVID-19 on school closures has mainly focused on primary and secondary education, with extremely limited attention to early...     

The day care and early education curriculum planning guide for May,June, and July

With custodial care the nemesis of parents, educators, and funding sources, a prime concern of child-care and early education people, and that includes teachers and family day care providers as well as other caregivers and administrators, is finding ways to provide the high-quality developmental care that all of us want for our children. This is the second in a series of four month-by-month curriculum planning guides to daily activities for preschoolers designed to keep you and your children busy for quite a while. And though it might not be obvious, virtually every activity has readiness of some kind built right in. So go ahead—enjoy! They're good for you, and the children too.Our thanks to Macmillan, Inc., publishers of Teacher magazine, for permission to adapt for this series some of the material by Ms. Blue that appeared in their Early Education Guide between September 1975 and May/June 1976.Rose Blue is an early childhood educator, an editor, and the author of over ten books for children and young adults. Correspondence can be addressed to her at 1320 51st Street, Brooklyn, New York 11219.     

Federal student financial aid awards as subsidies for higher education: What kinds of institutions are we supporting?

This paper attempts to shed light on the following question: What kinds of four-year institutions of higher learning benefit the most from federal student financial aid programs? We address this question by investigating how institutional quality, institutional mission, and the student's average net cost of attendance covary with average Pell grant, SEOG grant, GSL loan, and college work-study financial aid awards. Our sample is comprised of 254 nonproprietary four-year public institutions of higher learning and 499 nonproprietary four-year private institutions of higher learning.     

Memory and Speed: Their Role in the Relation of Infant Information Processing to Later IQ

This study examined the extent to which memory and processing speed accounted for relations we had found earlier between infant information processing and childhood IQ. The measures of speed and memory were obtained when the children were 11 years of age using paper-and-pencil tasks and an extensive battery of computer-administered tasks. The relations of 7 month visual recognition memory and 1 years cross-modal transfer to 11 years IQ were both substantially reduced with statistical control of factors dericed from these measures. These results suggest that speed and memory underlie some of the infant-childhood continuities in cognition. Path and stuctural equation modeling indicated that the significant pathways from 7 month visual recognition memory to 11 year IQ were nboth directr and indirect, the indirect paths going through memory and speed.     

The Letterbox Club: the impact on looked-after children and their carers of a national project aimed at raising achievements in literacy for children aged 7 to 11 in foster care

This paper considers the initial impact of a national project funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families which provides books, number activities and stationery items (once a month over a 6-month period) directly to children aged 7–11 in their foster homes. The context of the project, established against a background of low attainment in literacy among looked-after children in foster care in the UK, is explored. This paper focuses explicitly on the impact of the reading materials on the children who received them and on other people within the children's foster care environment. Particular reference is made to issues of ownership, textual preference and use of or engagement with the reading books, together with the implications that these findings may have for future work in this field both nationally and internationally.     

Children's Gender-Based Reasoning about Toys

The goal of these studies was to investigate how preschool children use gender-based reasoning in making judgments about toy preferences for themselves and for others. In Studies 1 and 2, children ( n = 22, n = 71) were shown unfamiliar, non-sex-typed toys and asked to rate how much they, other girls, and other boys would like each toy. As expected, children made gender-based inferences: "What I like, children of my sex will also like, and children of the other sex will not like." Study 3 was designed to assess how children use gender-based reasoning to make decisions about attractive and unattractive toys when they are given gender labels. Children ( n = 91) were shown unfamiliar toys varying in attractiveness that were given explicit gender labels (e.g., "this is a toy girls really like") or no label. With a different experimenter (to avoid demand characteristics), children rated their own and others' liking of the toys. Children used gender labels to guide their own preferences and their expectations for others. Even with very attractive toys, children liked toys less if they were labeled as being for the other sex, and expected other girls and boys to do the same. The role of gender-based reasoning in cognitive theories of gender and on children's play preferences is discussed.     

Phonological Awareness and Rapid Naming Skills of Children with Reading Disabilities and Children with Reading Disabilities Who Are At Risk for Mathematics Difficulties

Limited research has examined the skills of children with a reading disability (RD) and children with RD and a mathematics disability (MD). Even less research has examined the phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) skills in these two groups of children and how these skills relate to reading and math achievement. Additionally, various classification criteria are frequently implemented to classify children with MD. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine the PA and RAN skills in children who met different criteria for RD only and children with RD who are at risk for mathematics difficulties (MDR). Participants were 114 second‐ or third‐grade students with RD from public elementary schools in three large metropolitan areas. Students were classified as at risk for mathematics difficulties utilizing a 25th‐percentile cutoff and a 15th‐percentile cutoff as assessed by the KeyMath‐Revised Test ( Connolly, 1988 ). A series of PA and RAN measures were administered along with a range of reading and mathematics measures. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that children with RD only evidenced a different pattern of results compared to children with RD + MDR. Additionally, using a more stringent criterion to classify children at risk for mathematics difficulties resulted in a differential pattern of results when compared to a less stringent classification criterion.