Perceptions of Social Support Among Young Children

225 children (ages 4 to 8, 103 girls, 37.5% Mexican-American) participated, reporting who provides support, frequency of receiving different types of support, and satisfaction with support received. These reports were subjected to factor analyses and results did not fit a prior conceptualization. Exploratory factor analyses resulted in a three factor solution that was both more interpretable and the solutions were more similar for reports of frequency of receiving support and satisfaction. A total of six subscale scores were computed, three each for the frequency and the satisfaction items, which were subsequently labelled: informational/emotional, recreational, and practical support. Analyses of the empirically derived subscale scores suggested that young, pre- and early elementary school-aged children responded to questions about their social support in reasonably reliable and valid ways. Significant correlations with indices of perceived competence and acceptance resulted. Remarkably little is known about young children's perceptions of their social worlds, or specifically the nature of support they think is available or that they actually receive. These data suggest that gathering this information from the children themselves is feasible. Ultimately such information should be critical for the design and evaluation of early childhood curricula instructing children about social relations generally, and specifically, who they can turn to for support.     

Changing practice, changing minds, from arithmetical to algebraic thinking: an application of the concerns-based adoption model (CBAM)

This study examines the process of change among grade 4 teachers (students aged 9–10 years) who participated in a yearlong Teacher Quality Grant innovation program. The concerns-based adoption model (CBAM), which informed the design and implementation of the program, was used to examine the process of change. Two questions guided the investigation: (1) How did teachers’ concerns about and levels of use of the innovation evolve during the course of the project? (2) What changes in teachers’ perceptions and practices arose as a result of the innovation? Results showed that several of the teachers’ concerns evolved from self/task toward impact. With continued support, several participants achieved routine levels of use, which they sustained beyond the project.     

Young African-American Multigenerational Families in Poverty: Quality of Mothering and Grandmothering

Parenting practices (problem-solving and disciplinary styles) in a sample of 99 young, low-income, African-American multigenerational families were examined, using home-based observations of grandmothers and young mothers (mean age at first birth; 18.3; range = 13.3 to 25.5), interacting separately with 3-year-old children. A risk and resilience approach was applied in studying African-American families' behavior in harsh social contexts, and included a consideration of the role of kin, shared child rearing between mothers and grandmothers, coresidence, and adolescent parenthood. Mothers and grandmothers did not differ in the mean level of the quality of their parenting practices. Similarly, few significant correlations in parenting quality across generations were evident, and these primarily involved negative dimensions of parenting between younger childbearers and grandmothers. No main effect of mothers' age at first birth on mothers' parenting was found. In contrast, there was a main effect of grandmother coresidence on both mothers' and grandmothers' parenting, which was negative. Moreover, the interaction between coresidence and mothers' age at first birth indicated that multigenerational families most likely to provide positive parenting were those where older mothers did not reside with the grandmother. Yet, in families with very young mothers, coresiding grandmothers showed higher quality of parenting than did non-coresiding grandmothers.     

Preschool Children's Evolving Conceptions of Badness: A Longitudinal Study

The purpose of this research was to investigate longitudinally preschool children's conceptions of badness. Forty children from the Block and Block study of personality and cognitive development were interviewed at ages 3, 4, and 5 years. When asked to generate things children do that are “bad”, preschoolers predominately generated events entailing negative consequences to others, that is, moral transgressions. They also mentioned events pertaining to conventional violations, emotional expressions, prudential situations, and punishments, but these were comparatively rare. The moral transgressions generated involved physical harm, property violations, and inter- personal trust violations. Physical harm was referred to significantly more often than the latter two moral categories. These findings were stable across the preschool years.     

Reading Aloud with Infants: The Controversy, the Myth, and a Case Study

Reading aloud to infants continues to be the focus of controversy between educators, researchers, and health care professionals. This article will provide insight into what research says about reading aloud to infants as well as the results of a case study of a six-month-old infant who has been read aloud to in utero to the present time. The results of this case study confirm that parents and caregivers reading aloud to infants is necessary in developing literacy skills that are paramount to book awareness, print awareness, vocabulary development, fluency, and comprehension, all of which are stepping stones to learning to read and write.     

Food Safety Education Using Music Parodies

ABSTRACT:  Musical parodies of contemporary songs with their lyrics altered to address current food safety issues were incorporated into a variety of food safety educational programs and the effectiveness of the music was evaluated by semiquantitative and qualitative measures. Audiences receiving the music-enriched curricula included school foodservice supervisors, school foodservice managers, culinary arts instructors, culinary arts students, Family and Consumer Sciences teachers, and youth aged 8 to 12 y and studies were conducted in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Delaware. Among school foodservice supervisors, school foodservice managers, and culinary arts students, most participants were able to recall the main points of each song that was introduced in the curriculum. The culinary arts students were less likely to recall the main points of each song than were the other 2 groups, possibly because of the lack of prior knowledge of food safety practices as well as a lack of preference for the style of songs used. Family and Consumer Sciences teachers were enthusiastic about the use of the music but also identified potential barriers to the successful use of the music, due to the potential lack of appropriate audiovisual equipment, a lack of skills in using such equipment, and time constraints for the use of music in curricula due to the strong emphasis on end of year testing. Participants in the summer youth groups demonstrated significant increases between pre- and posttest examinations of safe food handling behaviors and most were able to quote lines or phrases from the songs.