Age Differences in Future Orientation and Delay Discounting

Age differences in future orientation are examined in a sample of 935 individuals between 10 and 30 years using a delay discounting task as well as a new self-report measure. Younger adolescents consistently demonstrate a weaker orientation to the future than do individuals aged 16 and older, as reflected in their greater willingness to accept a smaller reward delivered sooner than a larger one that is delayed, and in their characterizations of themselves as less concerned about the future and less likely to anticipate the consequences of their decisions. Planning ahead, in contrast, continues to develop into young adulthood. Future studies should distinguish between future orientation and impulse control, which may have different neural underpinnings and follow different developmental timetables.     

Complicating Culture and Difference: Situating Asian American Youth Identities in Lisa Yee’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Millicent Min,Girl Genius</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time</Emphasis>

This review situates how culture, difference, and identity are discursively constructed in Millicent Min, Girl Genius and Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time, two award-winning books written by critically acclaimed Asian American author Lisa Yee. Using contextual literacy approaches, the characters, cultural motifs, and physical settings in these texts are deconstructed to explore the nuances of Asian American youth identities that intersect along the lines of class, gender, and race. This review ends by offering teaching strategies for explicating Asian American young adult literature to critically investigate the representations of Asian American counter-narratives, experiences, and youth cultures. Rachel Endo is a Ph.D. Candidate in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her current research interests are comparative multicultural education, immigrant/refugee experiences in post-1965 contexts, teacher education, and transnational studies of Asian America.     

The impact of pre‐service field training sessions on the probability of future teachers using ICT in school

Most industrialised countries have adopted training strategies for pre‐service teachers that place experienced teacher guidance centre stage, particularly within the context of regular pre‐service field training sessions. In this article, after analysing the data taken from a longitudinal survey on the computer skills and attitudes of students toward the integration of ICT in teaching in primary and secondary school teacher education programmes at the University of Sherbrooke, the authors underline the potential contradictory effects between the classroom teaching observed during practicum and the effort to support the use of computer technology in school during university training. They conclude by underlining the importance of supporting the professional development of practising teachers regarding the use of ICT, with the aim of changing practices observed by students in training and optimising the probability of increasing the use of these technologies in their future role as teachers.     

Preschoolers’ use of count information to judge relative quantity

We examined preschool children's use of count information in making quantity judgments. Study 1 involved 35 children 3–5 years old using a balance-scale task to judge relative quantity with or without count information provided. Study 2 replicated and extended the exploration as 54 children 3–4 years old judged relative quantity in multiple counting contexts. Children who were given count information successfully used count information in quantity evaluation when visual cues were not useful. Limited experience of counting skills, strategy choice, and limited processing capacity are each discussed as potential explanations. Implications for early childhood practice and teacher education, as well as directions for future research are explored.     

Mental health and special educational needs: exploring a complex relationship

The relationship between mental health and special educational needs is both complex and misunderstood. In this article, Richard Rose, Professor of Special and Inclusive Education, Marie Howley, Senior Lecturer, Ann Fergusson, Senior Lecturer, and Johnson Jament, a PhD student, all from the Centre for Special Needs Education and Research directed by Richard Rose at the University of Northampton, discuss findings from a national research project which explored the perceptions of pupil mental health needs by staff working in residential special schools. Teachers and other professional colleagues often feel ill-prepared to address mental health difficulties experienced by their pupils. This is, at times, exacerbated by a wider confusion when atypical behaviours are attributed to a diagnosed learning difficulty rather than being recognised as symptomatic of a mental health problem. The article suggests a need for clarification of the relationship between complex special educational needs and mental health and for increases in training opportunities and the development of resources for teaching about and supporting mental health and emotional well-being.     

‘Exploring the “Construction” strand in the Irish Primary School Visual Arts Curriculum through the Forest School approach’

Forest School is a concept, or intervention to traditional educational settings, backed up by research and built upon long-standing theories that children engage with nature naturally and that learning becomes more relevant to the student when they can relate it to real life scenarios. This research documents the implementation of the Irish Primary School Visual Arts Curriculum through Forest School, specifically, the ‘Construction’ Strand. The research was a qualitative inquiry that was supported by an action research methodology. It was conducted over six weekly sessions. Key findings show the development of a sense of responsibility, resilience, independence, happiness in a sense of achievement and an awakened awareness of the child’s own surroundings. The findings advocate the benefits of implementing this approach to enhance the Primary School Visual Arts Curriculum, as well as promoting happiness and contentment in the remainder of the day at school in other curricular subjects. .     

Finger-writing intervention impacts the spelling and handwriting skills of children with developmental language disorder: a multiple single-case study

Learning to use grapheme to phoneme correspondences (GPCs) provides a powerful mechanism for the foundation of reading skills in children. However, for some children, such as those with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), the GPC learning process takes time, is laborious, and impacts the entire reading and spelling processes. The present study aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of a finger-writing intervention on reading, spelling and handwriting performances. A visuomotor support was designed to help them to learn more efficiently GPCs since children with DLD appear to have altered phonological representations in memory. Over a period of two months, five children with DLD from a special primary school (aged from 7.42 years to 10.17 years) received individually either a finger-writing intervention or a control intervention, both focusing on phonological awareness and the learning of specific GPCs. In the finger-writing intervention, the child had to explore with their fingers the shape of relief-graphemes and excavated-letter. In the control intervention, the same exercises were made except that the two finger-writing tasks were replaced by two visual discrimination tasks. Children were compared on several measures (reading, spelling, handwriting and phonological awareness) before and after the treatment. Results indicated that the children from the finger-writing intervention showed greater improvement than the children from the control group in learning GPCs to improve their graphemic spelling and, for two of the three children, in handwriting. These findings have a clear practical implication for teachers' instructional practices at school.     

Some Practical Guidelines for Measuring Youth's Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status

This short paper provides some guidelines to help researchers in child and adolescent development procure the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic information that will best determine how to assign youngsters to ethnic or SES groups. These guidelines are necessarily general. They will need to be adapted thoughtfully by each investigator because, as is generally true, how to define a measure depends intimately on the nature of the research problem. In preparing these guidelines, we have taken into account current practice at the Bureau of the Census, research traditions developed by sociologists who have mainly been concerned with adults, and challenges posed by the changing character of the U.S. population and its family forms. We are extremely grateful to the many social scientists listed below who have contributed so generously to our thinking, but especially to Robert Hauser. Naturally, any errors or opacities that remain are our responsibility.     

The concepts of individual, self, and group in Japanese National, Japanese-American, and European-American samples: a semantic differential analysis

This study empirically investigated variations in the semantic/affective construction of the concepts of “individual”, “self”, and “group” in individualistic and collectivistic cultures. Data were collected on the semantic differential ratings for these concepts among 110 Japanese National (JN), 110 Japanese-American (JA), and 110 European-American (EA) university students. Compared to the other two samples, the JN sample rated the concept of “individual” as weaker and more fast, the concept of “self” as more fast, and the concept of “group” as more strong and more slow. It also was revealed that the JA sample’s ratings of the three concepts tended to fall between the JN and EA samples’ ratings. Altogether, the findings offer further evidence that the individualism-collectivism distinction has psychological implications and predictive power.