Examining the Relations Between Spatial Skills,Spatial Anxiety,and K‐12 Teacher Practice

Spatial skills are important for student success in STEM disciplines at the K‐12 educational level. Teachers' spatial skills and feelings about completing spatial tasks influence their teaching as well as their students' spatial learning. However, the relation between teachers' spatial skills and their spatial anxiety is not well understood. Here we investigated if teachers' spatial skills influence two kinds of small‐scale spatial anxiety: (a) anxiety for tasks involving visual imagery and (b) anxiety for tasks involving mental manipulations. In addition, we investigated if teachers' spatial skills in conjunction with their small‐scale spatial anxiety influence the integration of spatial practices, such as gestures and diagrams, into their teaching. Eighty‐two K‐12 teachers completed two subscales of small‐scale spatial anxiety, a measure of spatial skills, and a teaching activities questionnaire. Results indicate that teachers' spatial skills are negatively associated with their spatial anxiety for mental manipulation tasks, and positively associated with their use of spatial practices. These findings highlight the need to account for teachers' spatial skills when considering how to improve students' spatial learning.     

Setting New Standards for Homo Academicus: Entrepreneurial University Graduates on the EU Agenda

In this article, we examine how the ideal university graduate is constructed in the European Commission’s documents on entrepreneurship education (EE). Our analysis illustrates how persuasive policy language determines the standards for educating entrepreneurial graduates to optimally meet the needs of the liberal market economy. We argue that the policy discourse on EE reformulates the idea of being academically educated. In the context of building the European knowledge economy, EE has become a significant theme that establishes neoliberal ideals, redefines the values of European university education, and generates instrumental and one-dimensional understanding of the purpose of university education.     

Family and social risk,and parental investments during the early childhood years as predictors of low-income children's school readiness outcomes

Using data from the National Early Head Start (EHS) Research and Evaluation Project (N = 1851), the current study examined relations among cumulative family and social risk, assessed during infancy and the preschool years, and children's prekindergarten achievement, self-regulatory skills, and problematic social behavior, testing if these associations were mediated through two sets of family processes–responsive parenting practices and the provision of language stimulation and literacy practices. Structural equation modeling results highlight the significance of the timing of children's experience of risk in predicting school readiness competencies. Risk exposure during infancy was observed to be most detrimental for children's school readiness skills and was partially mediated by risk exposure during the preschool years and family processes, assessed during toddlerhood and the preschool years. Moderation analyses revealed no difference in the strength of relationships among the study variables by EHS assignment or by race/ethnicity.     

Work-based antipoverty programs for parents can enhance the school performance and social behavior of children

We assess the impact of the New Hope Project, an antipoverty program tested in a random assignment experimental design, on family functioning and developmental outcomes for preschool- and school-aged children (N = 913). New Hope offered wage supplements sufficient to raise family income above the poverty threshold and subsidies for child care and health insurance to adults who worked full-time. New Hope had strong positive effects on boys' academic achievement, classroom behavior skills, positive social behavior, and problem behaviors, as reported by teachers, and on boys' own expectations for advanced education and occupational aspirations. There were not corresponding program effects for girls. The child outcomes may have resulted from a combination of the following: Children in New Hope families spent more time in formal child care programs and other structured activities away from home than did children in control families. New Hope parents were employed more, had more material resources, reported more social support, and expressed less stress and more optimism about achieving their goals than did parents in the control sample. The results suggest that an anti-poverty program that provides support for combining work and family responsibilities can have beneficial effects on the development of school-age children.     

Child labor in Bombay

Of the world's largest child labor force in India, Bombay has over 30,000 working children, most of them migrants. In a prospective study of 73 working children from a part of Dharavi, the biggest slum in Asia, 68% were working as hotel boys; 22% had started working before their 10th birthday, a large number doing so to increase the family income, but earning less than Rs. 100 ($11) per month. Forty percent worked more than 12 hours a day and only 16% continued schooling. Two-thirds depended entirely on their employers for food which was adequate and no child in the study was malnourished. Overall incidence of anemia and vitamin deficiency was 10% each. Only 7% had ailments related to their occupation. Because this was a cross-sectional study no conclusions can be drawn regarding long term and residual effects. Preventing children from working is likely to make worse their own as well as their families' problems unless substitute sources of income or welfare are available. Legal protection and other services near their working places are essential for those who have to work.     

Permeating the social justice ideals of equality and equity within the context of Early Years: challenges for leadership in multi-cultural and mono-cultural primary schools

This paper explores the ideology of social justice through links between equality and equity within Early Years and what remain the challenges for leadership. Questionnaires and interviews in English multi-cultural and mono-cultural schools with Early Years age phases were conducted. The findings showed that the ideology of social justice, equality and equity was interpreted differently in each Early Years setting. The multi-cultural schools used a variety of activities to embed social justice principles that involved their diverse communities more to enrich the curriculum in contrast to the mono-cultural schools. In mono-cultural schools however, leadership had to be more creative in promoting equality and equity, given the smaller proportion of their diverse pupil and staff population. Our conclusions suggest that most schools are struggling initially with implementing the current changes in Early Years, therefore their vision for permeating this curriculum with an equality and equity focus is at the early stages.     

Socioeconomic status, parental investments, and the cognitive and behavioral outcomes of low-income children from immigrant and native households

The current study examines the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on preschool children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes and if these relations are mediated by the quality of children's home environment and moderated by family nativity status. Data come from 1459 low-income families (n = 257 and 1202 immigrant and native families, respectively). Results indicated that among both immigrant and native households, maternal education, as compared to household income or welfare receipt, was the strongest predictor of a composite of SES. Path analyses estimated direct and indirect effects of SES and revealed greater similarity than difference in the processes by which SES influences immigrant and native children's preschool outcomes. Language/literacy stimulation and maternal supportiveness mediated the relations of SES to children's cognitive outcomes among both immigrant and native families. In contrast, parenting stress mediated the effects of SES on children's aggressive behavior among native, but not immigrant, households.