Evaluating climate change behaviors and concern in the family context

Abstract

Although research suggests that family dynamics likely play a role in shaping children’s behaviors, few studies focus on environmental behaviors, and none to our knowledge investigate how parents shape climate change mitigation behaviors among their children. We begin to fill this gap through a quantitative case study using matched household-level survey data from 182 coastal North Carolina families (n?=?241 parents aged 29–77; n?=?182 students aged 11–14) associated with 15 middle school science teachers. Family climate change discussions, parent behaviors, and children’s climate change concern levels predicted the degree to which children will participate in individual-level climate mitigation behaviors. These results provide evidence that promoting climate-related conversations within households may promote climate action even when parents are apathetic about climate change. Similarly, parental behaviors, but not their concern levels, were important predictors of adolescent behaviors. This study highlights novel ways that family dynamics may promote climate change mitigating behaviors and a new pathway to promoting climate mitigation at familial, and ultimately, societal levels.     

The Development of Professional Learning Communities and Their Teacher Leaders: An Activity Systems Analysis

Professional learning communities can be effective vehicles for teacher learning and instructional improvement, partly because they help change professional culture. However, little is known about how these changes occur. We used activity systems analysis to investigate the development of professional learning communities and their teacher leaders (N = 9) based on interviews and observations over 2 years. Activity systems analysis enables researchers to understand change within complex qualitative data sets by finding systemic relations within the activity, specifying contradictions in the system, and explicating outcomes. The resulting activity system illuminates the transformation of a mostly private, autonomous, and egalitarian culture to one of nascent collaboration, reflection, and shared values, as well as teacher leaders’ development of agency.     

Teaching for tomorrow: An exploratory study of prekindergarten teachers’ underlying assumptions about how children learn

This study investigated eight prekindergarten teachers’ underlying assumptions about how children learn, and how these assumptions were used to inform and enact instruction. By contextualizing teachers’ knowledge and understanding as it is used in practice we were able to provide unique insight into the work of teaching. Participants focused on children’s ability to remember information, frequently through engagement and repetition. Teachers also anticipated what children would be learning in the early elementary years and taught that content, yet they did not necessarily expect children to remember the information, or even know if children learned the information. Implications for the design of both preservice and in-service teacher education are discussed. This includes helping teachers develop a strong foundational understanding of how children learn, establishing the pedagogical content knowledge relevant to teaching advanced symbol systems like literacy, and shifting pedagogical reasoning about practice. Given the link between the quality of instructional support and learning in the early years, developing the early childhood teaching force’s capacity to use knowledge to reason skillfully about teaching offers a critical lever for creating robust learning in the early years.     

What’s growing on here? Garden-based pedagogy in a concrete jungle

This study explores experiences of a learning garden project at an urban faculty of education. The project opens a space for the theoretical and practical consideration of garden-based pedagogies and their influence on university students, educators, and the community as a whole. The learning garden was created by a small group of initial teacher education and graduate students and faculty volunteers. The group came together through shared interests in growing the theoretical, curricular, and pedagogical work carried out at the institution, through the opening of a unique and organic context for teaching and learning. This paper follows a duoethnographic approach as it traces the garden’s growth, our experiences with and in the garden, and the effects of the garden over its first year. Through dialogue, anecdotes and interactions, we explore themes that have grown from the research and garden’s growth, creating multiple, often unexpected, dimensions of praxis. We also unearth the complexities and tensions of institutional relationships as the garden interrupted norms and opened up spaces for multiplicity, alterity and difference in pedagogy, allowing us to revisit, review and renew our work in our institution’s approach to environmental education.     

Motivation coaching training for instructional coaches: a pilot study of motivational interviewing skills training

In our paper we describe a newly developed teacher coaching model that provides training on motivational interviewing (MI) to improve instructional coaches’ effectiveness with classroom teachers. Participants were 38 coaches who completed a three-day coaching training. At pre- and post-test, the participants completed role plays with an actor who played the role of a new teacher. Then, these sessions were coded for MI-consistent behavior. The results of our study revealed that the majority of the coaching conversations were inconsistent with effective MI. At baseline, conversations were primarily characterized by questions (60%) followed by attempts to persuade without permission (20%). Following training, coaches did not change their conversational style. Because an MI-inconsistent conversation style is associated with decreased self-efficacy and motivation for change, the findings suggest a need to help coaches develop interactions that are more consistent with best practices of MI.     

Attributions,affect, and behavior in abuse-risk mothers: a laboratory study

OBJECTIVE: There were two main aims: first, to assess parental attributions about child behavior in abuse-risk and nonclinic parents. Second, to assess how attributions predict affective and behavioral reactions to child behavior. METHOD: Internal-external attributions relating to the causes of child behavior were compared across mothers at-risk of child abuse (n = 40) and mothers who reported no significant parental or child conduct or behavior problems (n = 20). Mothers' attributions about the causes of the behavior of their own child and an unfamiliar child were recorded in response to the presentation of videotaped excerpts of the behavior. RESULTS: Results highlighted that compared with nonclinic mothers, abuse-risk mothers had a tendency to attribute positive child behavior to more external causes and negative child behavior to more internal causes. Differences were also found between parental cognitions about clearly positive, clearly naughty, and ambiguous child behavior. In the abuse-risk group, positive child behavior predicted coercive parenting when it elicited angry feelings in the mother; ambiguous and naughty child behavior led to coercive parenting through valence ratings of "deviant" and attributions of "internality." Analyses within the abuse-risk group showed that parental attributions are predictive of parental coerciveness for unfamiliar behavior. As behavior becomes more familiar, ratings of its valence and the affect it elicits override attributional activity. CONCLUSIONS: Parental attributions about the causes of child behavior differ according to the valence and familiarity of that behavior, and discriminate between parents at risk for child abuse. Further, attributions are predictive of the affective and behavioral responses the parent makes to the child's behavior for ambiguous or unfamiliar behavior. Evidence was found for the validity of using videotaped stimuli of the behavior of known and unknown children as a method of assessing parental attributions.     

For Science and Self: Youth Interactions with Data in Community and Citizen Science

In youth-focused community and citizen (YCCS) youth in classrooms and community-based programs produce data that scientists, resource managers and community members will use. This “nested” data situates learners’ scientific activity within larger datasets, projects, and communities, with consequences for youth agency. To document opportunities for agentive learning with data in YCCS, we report on how youth interact with data across eight school and community-based project sites and how youth talk about their data and work. From analysis of 54 participant interviews, we found that youth perceived the data they produced as being used for: (1) broader scientific work, (2) their own learning, and (3) community endeavors. Nested uses of data were most meaningful when youth interacted with end users, were exposed to the larger datasets to which they contributed, or took action linked to data. Not all youth saw, believed, or valued that data would be used by others. Framing of task and purpose, nature of engagement with community users, data production protocols, and level of emphasis on youth-identified questions may contribute to youth perceptions and can foster or undermine conditions for learner agency. The results shed light on when and how conditions for expansive learning and agency get established.     

Opening Doors: Understanding School and Family Influences on Family Involvement

Family involvement in schooling can benefit young children, teachers, and families. Family involvement in schools can be influenced by both school-related and family-related factors. School-related factors include teachers’ attitudes toward families, and school and teacher expectations. Family-related factors include ethnicity, prior school experiences, and family work schedules. Teachers who recognize and understand these influences can employ a variety of strategies to facilitate the involvement of families in the school experience of young children.     

Project-based learning for middle school students monitoring standby power: replication of impact on stem knowledge and dispositions

Educational technology research and development - Middle school students participating in energy-monitoring activities guided by their teachers during 2009–2011 gained...