Developmental patterns of school students' motivational‐ and cognitive‐metacognitive competencies

This study examined the metacognitive developmental patterns of Hong Kong school students. Students rated their own metacognitive competencies by responding to an inventory of six motivational‐ and cognitive‐metacognitive subscales. Results showed that students' metacognitive competencies decreased with age—from primary 4 (age 9) to secondary 5 (age 17)—with a sharp decline noticeable at the primary/secondary school transition. Age had a more powerful effect than gender on students' perception of their metacognitive competencies. This decreasing pattern of Hong Kong students' metacognitive competencies is contrary to the developmental trends found in Western countries. However, the comparatively high academic performance of Hong Kong students also suggests some different recommendations about student learning.     

Is Liberal Studies a political instrument in the secondary school curriculum? Lessons from the Umbrella Movement in post-colonial Hong Kong

This paper examines whether Hong Kong teachers and students perceived Liberal Studies and its ongoing curriculum review as politically driven during and after the Umbrella Movement, a large-scale civil disobedience campaign that took place in September 2014. The findings presented herein show that both groups disagreed with the claim that Liberal Studies was used as a political instrument to instigate students’ participation in the protest movement. Moreover, they also reveal that teachers have maintained their neutrality towards controversial issues related to politics during Liberal Studies lessons. Whilst the participating teachers and students considered the government's proposed reform of Liberal Studies to be politically motivated, they held differing attitudes towards the addition of more China-related elements to the subject. On the basis of these results, this paper analyses the potential role of Liberal Studies in the democratisation of local society. It also provides an indication of the curriculum's dynamic nature, explanation of students’ resistance to the review policy and suggestions for the subject's future development.     

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.     

A two‐component growth mindset intervention for young people with SEND

Interventions to increase the endorsement of the growth mindset (the belief that intelligence can be improved with effort) have been successfully implemented in schools. However, they rarely target children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), a group who are more likely to endorse a fixed mindset, experience lower academic self‐concept and academic resilience, and be at risk of negative stereotyped attitudes. This quasi‐experimental study implemented a 10‐week PSHE programme as well as dedicated lessons with adapted classroom practices, for example, task framing and feedback, to promote the growth mindset message to young people with SEND (N = 18). Analyses of pre‐ to post‐intervention measures demonstrated moderate evidence for the intervention having increased students’ endorsement of the growth mindset, as well as anecdotal evidence for increased academic self‐concept, academic resilience and positive attitudes to disability. However, these effects were not sustained in follow‐up measures conducted 7 weeks post‐intervention. The intervention did not improve students’ academic performance. Although preliminary, findings demonstrate the viability of growth mindset interventions for children and young people with SEND, but suggest that interventions should be maintained for longer‐lasting effects.     

Personal Storytelling as a Medium of Socialization in Chinese and American Families

The goal of this study was to determine how personal storytelling functions as a socializing practice within the family context in middle-class Taiwanese and middle-class European American families. The data consist of more than 200 naturally occurring stories in which the past experiences of the focal child, aged 2,6, were narrated. These stories were analyzed at 3 levels: content, function, and structure. Findings converged across these analytic levels, indicating that personal storytelling served overlapping yet distinct socializing functions in the 2 cultural cases. In keeping with the high value placed on didactic narrative within the Confucian tradition, Chinese families were more likely to use personal storytelling to convey moral and social standards. European American families did not treat stories of young children's past experiences as a didactic resource but instead employed stories as a medium of entertainment and affirmation. These findings suggest not only that personal storytelling operates as a routine socializing practice in widely different cultures but also that it is already functionally differentiated by 2,6.     

Does More Intensive Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Follow-Up Service Result in Better Outcomes? A Cost-Effective Analysis

Little is known about the relative cost-effectiveness of the many different types of early intervention services provided to medically fragile infants and their families. This study compared two intensities of services for such infants and their families: (a) a coordinated and comprehensive system of early intervention services initiated prior to discharge from the NICU and designed to transition infants to community-based services were compared with the effects of services (high intensity); and (b) a more traditional hospital follow-up consisting of medical checkups and referrals following discharge (low intensity). High-intensity services resulted in five times more community-based early intervention hours for families and infants when compared with low-intensity services. Annual costs of the high-intensity group were approximately triple the costs of the low-intensity group ($10,814 versus $3,032 per child per year), but there were only a few statistically significant differences on measures of child and family functioning between the groups at 6-, 12-, 18-, and 24months' corrected age. Implications of these findings for research and practice are given.     

Interagency collaboration between child protection and mental health services: practices, attitudes and barriers

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper is to examine some of the factors that facilitate and hinder interagency collaboration between child protection services and mental health services in cases where there is a parent with a mental illness and there are protection concerns for the child(ren). The paper reports on agency practices, worker attitudes and experiences, and barriers to effective collaboration. METHOD: A self-administered, cross-sectional survey was developed and distributed via direct mail or via line supervisors to workers in statutory child protection services, adult mental health services, child and youth mental health services, and Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) Teams. There were 232 completed questionnaires returned, with an overall response rate of 21%. Thirty-eight percent of respondents were statutory child protection workers, 39% were adult mental health workers, 16% were child and youth mental health workers, and 4% were SCAN Team medical officers (with 3% missing data). RESULTS: Analysis revealed that workers were engaging in a moderate amount of interagency contact, but that they were unhappy with the support provided by their agency. Principle components analysis and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) on items assessing attitudes toward other workers identified four factors, which differed in rates of endorsement: inadequate training, positive regard for child protection workers, positive regard for mental health workers, and mutual mistrust (from highest to lowest level of endorsement). The same procedure identified the relative endorsement of five factors extracted from items about potential barriers: inadequate resources, confidentiality, gaps in interagency processes, unrealistic expectations, and professional knowledge domains and boundaries. CONCLUSIONS: Mental health and child protection professionals believe that collaborative practice is necessary; however, their efforts are hindered by a lack of supportive structures and practices at the organizational level.     

Socioeconomic status and health in adolescents: the role of stress interpretations

The role of psychological interpretations in the relationship between low socioeconomic status (SES) and physiological responses was tested. One hundred high school students (ages 15–19) watched videos of ambiguous and negative life situations, and were interviewed about their interpretations. Lower SES was associated with greater threat interpretations during ambiguous (but not negative) situations and with greater diastolic blood pressure and heart rate reactivity. Threat interpretations partially mediated relationships between SES and reactivity. General life events (e.g., lack of positive life events), rather than specific life events (e.g., exposure to violence), partially explained the relationship between low SES and threat interpretations. Results suggest that the larger social environment helps explain how adolescents approach new social situations, which in turn has implications for adolescent physical health.     

Gender Differences in Social Mastery Motivation and Its Relationships to Vocabulary Knowledge,Behavioral Self-Regulation,and Socioemotional Skills

The present study investigated gender differences in social mastery motivation, vocabulary knowledge, behavioral self-regulation, and socioemotional skills and examined the relationships among this knowledge and these skills by gender. Participants were 134 Chinese children (68 boys, M age = 3.80; 66 girls, M age = 3.89) and their parents recruited through local kindergartens’ parent groups. The children were administered measures of social mastery motivation, vocabulary knowledge, behavioral self-regulation, and nonverbal intelligence. Parents reported their education level and children’s socioemotional skills. Research Findings: Results revealed that boys exhibited more social mastery interactions than girls, and girls showed better behavioral self-regulation and socioemotional skills than boys. Girls with higher social mastery interaction frequency demonstrated better vocabulary knowledge and socioemotional skills, whereas boys with higher social mastery interaction frequency showed lower behavioral self-regulation. Boys, who showed more positive affect during social mastery interactions, tended to have better expressive vocabulary, which facilitated their behavioral self-regulation. Practice or Policy: Findings highlight social mastery motivation as a potential factor that facilitates children’s early development, but it may contribute to boys and girls in different ways.