Children's Moral Motive Strength and Temperamental Inhibition Reduce Their Immoral Behavior in Real Moral Conflicts

This study is concerned with the prediction of interindividual differences in children's immoral behavior in real moral conflicts by moral motive strength (appropriate attribution of moral emotions to story characters), temperamental inhibition, and ego control. Children were tempted to cheat at age 6 when they felt unobserved, or to contend for a scarce resource in peer triads at age 7. Moral motive strength and inhibition, but not ego control, predicted low cheating and low nonverbal rivalry to a similar extent. Extreme group analyses of children low or high in both traits showed that cheating/noncheating could be predicted with a hit rate above 90%. Nonverbal rivalry in a group increased exponentially with the number of low-moral uninhibited children in the group, a finding replicated within the same sample. Discussion focuses on the influence of moral motive strength, temperamental inhibition, ego control, and their interaction on the reduction of immoral behavior.     

Social and Dimensional Comparisons in the Formation of German Students’ Language Self-Concepts

Abstract

This study extended the internal/external reference model to multiple languages including students’ language of instruction, first foreign language, and second foreign language. We examined whether social and dimensional comparisons play similar roles in the formation of students’ self-concept related to different languages and whether dimensional comparisons result in contrast or assimilation effects. All students had German as the language of instruction and English as the first foreign language. Students were divided into a subsample (N?=?487) learning French as a second foreign language and a subsample (N?=?481) learning Latin. Invariance tests demonstrated that the achievement–self-concept relations were similar across the subsamples, but interesting group differences became apparent when analyzing the French and Latin subsamples separately.     

Early linguistic abilities and reading development: A review and a hypothesis

This article is concerned with aspects of phonological processing and linguistic awareness that may set the stage for initial reading development. The aims are first to provide a current review of phonological processes (both underlying and metaphonological) that have been found to be associated with initial reading achievement, secondly to present a new hypothesis relating differences in the nature of phonological representations in the lexicon to the development of phonological awareness and other phonological processes. The hypothesis is concerned withdistinctness of phonological representations, i.e. the separateness of phonological representations. Phonological representations of high distinctness are distinguished from other representations by many features. The distinctness hypothesis is compared to the lexical restructuring hypothesis which suggests that lexical representations gradually become increasingly segmental between one and eight years of age. Implications of each hypothesis (emphasizing the distinctness hypothesis) for the development of language abilities and reading are presented, along with suggestions regarding future research directions.     

Studies on educational reconstruction of chaos theory

The studies presented here comprise a project on the educational significance of chaos theory. Or to put it in a nutshell, we attempt to analyse critically whether the core ideas of chaos theory (as, for instance, limited predictability of chaotic systems despite deterministic laws governing them) are worth teaching and learning and furthermore we follow up the question of accessibility of these ideas for students. Subject matter structure clarification (i.e., construction of the mentioned key ideas) analyses of educational significance on the basis of widely accepted aims of teaching science, empirical studies on students' learning processes, and finally, development and evaluation of pilot instructional modules are closely interrelated. To put it into our terminology, the studies are embedded in a Model of Educational Reconstruction which may be seen as an approach to curriculum development that, on the one hand, takes into account the major insights provided by the constructivist view of the past two decades resting, on the other hand, on the tradition of German pedagogical theories on framing educational issues.     

Exercising older people´s brains in Costa Rica: Design principles for using information and communication technologies for cognitive activity and social interaction

This study is part of a design-based research project aimed at designing a learning intervention for enabling Costa Rican older people to use information and communication technologies for cognitive activity and social interaction. Data from relevant literature, a focus group with older adults, and interviews with professionals teaching older adults how to use information and communication technologies were analyzed, in order to create context-sensitive design principles that could guide the design of learning interventions that meet the needs of older learners. The analysis derived context-sensitive design principles that include wider topics that influence the learning process, such as emotions and stereotypes related to learning about and using information and communication technologies, as well as the social support to that learning. The resulting eight design principles argue for respectful learning environments, in-depth comprehension of changes related to aging, time and space to reflect on emotions related to the learning process, and acknowledgment of participants’ individuality.     

Piaget, Meet Lilly: Understanding Child Development through Picture Book Characters

Picture books appeal to readers of all ages for many different reasons. As instructors of child development, we use them as one strategy to help students conceptualize the physical, cognitive, and socioemotional growth of children. We use picture books to introduce principles, explain vocabulary, and encourage students to make connections between theory and practice in early childhood education. In this article, we provide examples of picture books that can be used to understand children from infancy (birth–2 years) to early childhood (2–6 years). Twenty-four suggested titles accurately narrate and illustrate early development.     

The role of morpheme recognition and morphological awareness in dyslexia

This paper begins by presenting theoretical arguments and empirical evidence to support the idea that morpheme analysis strategies play a part in word recognition in reading, and in dyslexia in particular. The results of two studies are presented which indicate that dyslexic adolescents use recognition of root morphemes as a compensatory strategy in reading of both single words and coherent text. Furthermore, the evidence is reviewed that the use of morpheme recognition as a strategy in reading to some extent depends on the linguistic awareness of morphemes in spoken language. Finally, results from a pilot study of the effects of morphological awareness training of dyslexic students are presented which suggest that it may be possible to improve the awareness of morphology independently of phoneme awareness, and that such a training may have positive effects on reading of coherent text and on the accurate spelling of morphologically complex words.     

Gezählte Kompetenz

Der Beitrag diskutiert die Bedeutung von Zitationsanalysen als Instrumente zur Bewertung und Qualit?tssicherung von Forschungshandeln. Bisher ist der Aussagewert empirisch gestützter Zitationsindizes sehr begrenzt, weil Zitationen lediglich als Belege von Sichtbarkeit, Akzeptanz und Einfluss wissenschaftlicher Leistungen angesehen werden. Stattdessen wird hier nun vorgeschlagen, intertextuelle Relationen als Dokumente epistemischer Aktivit?t selbst zu begreifen. Nach dieser Deutung sind Zitate dann nicht l?nger nur pellets of recognition, sondern verzeichnen zugleich immer auch Inszenierungsversuche und F?lle erfolgreicher Performanz der Leistung eines Forschers. In diesem Sinne sind sie als pellets of understanding zu verstehen, die der Forschungsinnovation dienen k?nnen. Ausgehend von dieser überlegung diskutiert der Beitrag Rahmenbedingungen einer Theorie des wissenschaftlichen Zitats und problematisiert den m?glichen Ertrag eines solchen Ansatzes für die Erziehungswissenschaft, weshalb abschlie?end vorgeschlagen wird, Zitationsdichte als Indiz für den Ausdifferenzierungsgrad spezifischer Forschungszusammenh?nge zu begreifen, zitationelle Einzelfallanalysen anzustrengen, um die Qualit?t und Güte spezifischer Forschungsbeitr?ge dieser Disziplin zu prüfen und so die empirischen Befunde traditioneller Zitationsindizes zu erg?nzen.