Responsibility for nurturing a child’s wellbeing: teachers teaching mindfulness with children

ABSTRACT

A thriving and evolving pool of research and commentary is emerging in relation to the integration of mindfulness techniques in school and out-of-school settings. In the current study the author explored how experienced mindbody wellness instructors make sense of teaching children mindfulness. The methodology of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to interview eight teachers teaching mindfulness with children from the United States and Australia. Four thematic categories emerged from the analysis and in this article the author discusses findings related to the theme of, Responsibility for Nurturing a Child’s Wellbeing. It was discovered that having a holistic-wellness-orientated vision was an important aspect of how teachers made sense of mindfulness instruction. The findings showed that teaching children mindfulness has the capacity to raise academic performance while synergistically enhancing a child’s spiritual, environmental, emotional, social, creative and physical wellbeing. It is recommended that mindfulness teacher training programs be established in universities to better prepare students to meet the demands of 21^st Century education.     

Reading comprehension interventions for middle school students with learning disabilities: a synthesis of 30 years of research

The authors conducted a synthesis of studies of reading comprehension interventions for middle school students (Grades 6-8) identified with a learning disability. They identified 12 studies between 1979 and 2009 with treatment and comparison designs and 2 single-participant studies. Findings from the studies indicate large effect sizes for researcher-developed comprehension measures. Few studies (n = 4) reported standardized measures of reading comprehension, which indicated medium effect sizes. The majority of study treatments (n = 13) utilized strategy instruction related to main idea or summarization.     

Concurrent validity of the Polar s3 Stride Sensor for measuring walking stride velocity

With this research, we sought to establish the accuracy of stride velocity data collected by the s3 Stride Sensor Participants walked along a GAITRite mat at self-selected slow, preferred, and fast velocities, with two s3 Stride Sensors attached to their right foot. The start position was systematically varied such that the GAITRite system would record the second through sixth strides at each walking velocity. Both slow and preferred walking velocities were underestimated by 14% relative to the GAITRite (p < .05), while independent of walking velocity, Strides 2 and 3 were underestimated by 26% and 9% (p < .05), respectively. Researchers should use caution when interpreting data collected at slow and preferred walking velocities and during the first three strides.     

Letter knowledge in parent–child conversations

Learning about letters is an important component of emergent literacy. We explored the possibility that parent speech provides information about letters, and also that children’s speech reflects their own letter knowledge. By studying conversations transcribed in CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000) between parents and children aged one to five, we found that alphabetic order influenced use of individual letters and letter sequences. The frequency of letters in children’s books influenced parent utterances throughout the age range studied, but children’s utterances only after age two. Conversations emphasized some literacy-relevant features of letters, such as their shapes and association with words, but not letters’ sounds. Describing these patterns and how they change over the preschool years offers important insight into the home literacy environment.     

Shared Entertainment,Shared Opinions: The Influence of Social TV Comments on the Evaluation of Talent Shows

The present research investigated whether co-viewer comments in social TV interactions are able to enhance or weaken media effects. With the example of talent shows, the valence of co-viewer comments (pro/contra/none) as well as the type of content (antisocial behavior vs. conventional performance) were varied in an experiment (N = 117). Results showed that participants’ own comments and their private attitudes about the judges varied in line with comment valence. Findings suggest that social TV viewers are prone to social influence of their co-viewers, which might amplify problems regarding the portrayal of antisocial behavior in reality TV.     

Early Childhood Creativity: Challenging Educators in Their Role to Intentionally Develop Creative Thinking in Children

Creativity is a topic of wide global interest, often discussed in fields such as education, psychology and business (Runco, Divergent thinking and creative potential, Hampton Press, New York, 2013; Yoruk and Runco, Journal for Neurocognitive Research 56:1–16, 2014). However, the relationship of pedagogical practices in early childhood education and care (ECEC) as it applies to the development of creative thought processes of young children is a relatively new area for investigation. This paper presents recent research that examines the role of the educator as an intentional teacher within Australian early learning environments and investigates the relationship of this role to children’s developing creativity. Theoretically informed by Vygotsky’s sociocultural constructivist approach (Vygotsky, Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1930, 1978) and neo-Vygotskian theories on creativity (John-Steiner and Moran, Educational Psychologist 31:191–206, 2012), this paper explores some of the beliefs and understandings of educators on creativity. Furthermore, this paper exposes some of the misconceptions of educators about children’s creative thinking as they engage in play-based learning activities. The evidence from this Australian study suggests that the role of the educator is pivotal in assisting children in the early development of creative thinking thus challenging their role as educators.