Children's Behavioral Adjustment in Pre-Primary Schools in Tanzania: A Multilevel Approach

Research Findings: The present study concerns children's behavioral adjustment in the context of pre-primary schools in Tanzania. Twenty teachers and 320 children from 20 pre-primary schools participated in the study. Teacher–child relationships, children's behavioral adjustment, and teachers' cultural beliefs were reported by teachers; classroom emotional support was measured through classroom observation. The multilevel findings revealed that high-quality teacher–child relationships and high-quality teacher sensitivity were related to children's prosocial behavioral adjustment. In contrast, observed low-quality teacher–child relationships and low-quality teacher sensitivity were found to be related to children's aggression and anxiety. In addition, teachers' cultural beliefs, concerning play in particular, were found to be related to children's anxiety. The findings support the ecological theory regarding the importance of child characteristics and classroom context in shaping a child's behavioral adjustment in schools. Practice or Policy: The results have implications for pre-primary school teachers in Tanzania, to consider their relationships with children and their sensitivity to children as important aspects for children's behavioral adjustment in schools. They also inform policymakers about the role of pre-primary school teachers in the country.     

PROBLEM FINDING: DISCOVERING AND FORMULATING PROBLEMS

Research and theory on problem finding are scarce. This can be ascribed to difficulties in the operationalisation of the concept and to neglect of the importance of this essential link in the problem solving cycle. A similar lacuna, however, is not found in early research in the field of problem solving. In problem solving four components can be distinguished: cognitive (sensitivity to problems and formulating the problem), motivational (effectance motivation and curiosity), emotional (wonder and surprise) and, finally, personality components (tolerance for ambiguity, stimulus reduction and self‐confidence). Selective encoding, combining and comparing can be regarded as essential elements of the cognitive component. With respect to the developmental aspects of problem finding, emphasis is laid on the importance of competence motivation and the quality of attachment as determinants. The educational implications are unequivocal: problem solving and problem finding must have equal positions in curricula. For the time being this means that education will have to pay more attention to problem finding.     

Learning‐disabled children and normally‐achieving children solve visuo‐spatial problems1

ABSTRACT

In order to compare the performance of learning‐disabled and normally‐achieving children (of between nine and 11 years of age) on visuo‐spatial tasks, the Raven's Progressive Matrices, the Children's Embedded Figures Test and three self‐designed visuo‐spatial tasks were administered. The study has been conducted within the theoretical framework of a human information‐processing approach.

     

Peer bullying,self-serving cognitive distortions and school moral climate perception in Spanish and Dutch secondary school students / Acoso escolar,distorsiones cognitivas en beneficio propio y percepción del clima moral escolar en estudiantes de secundaria de España y Holanda

Students’ role in traditional bullying and cyberbullying was investigated in relation to self-serving cognitive distortions (SSCD), perception of school moral climate and bullying observation. Participants were secondary school students from Spain (n = 568; 286 girls) and the Netherlands (n = 421; 223 girls). The results demonstrated that in both country samples, bullies and bully-victims had higher levels of SSCD. Both Spanish and Dutch students who were directly involved in traditional bullying situations showed more negative perceptions of the school moral climate. In cyberbullying situations, bystanders scored higher on school moral climate perception than bullies and bully-victims. Furthermore, school moral climate perception was negatively associated with traditional bullying observation in the group of victims, and with cyberbullying observation in the case of victims and bystanders. The present findings suggest that future research should focus on the cause-effect relations of these factors, which could include measuring the effects on bullying prevalence of an intervention aimed at SSCD reduction in bullies and bystanders and the improvement of the school moral climate.     

Hierarchical structure of moral stages assessed by a sorting task

Following criticism of Kohlberg's theory of moral judgment, an empirical re-examination of hierarchical stage structure was desirable. Utilizing Piaget's concept of reflective abstraction as a basis, the hierarchical stage structure was investigated using a new method. Study participants (553 Dutch university students and 196 Russian high school students) sorted statements in terms of moral sophistication. These statements were typical for the different stages of moral development as defined in Colby and Kohlberg. The rank ordering performed by participants confirmed the hypotheses. First, despite large individual variation, the ordering of the statements that gave the best fit revealed that each consecutive Kohlbergian stage was perceived to be more morally sophisticated. Second, the lower the stage as represented by the items, the higher the agreement among the participants in their ranking; and the higher the stage as represented by the items, the lower the agreement among the participants in the rankings. Moreover, the pivotal point depended on the developmental characteristics of the sample, which demonstrated a developmental effect: The ordering of statements representative of moral stages below one's own current stage was straightforward, whereas the ordering of statements above one's own stage was difficult. It was concluded that the Piagetian idea of reflective abstraction can be used successfully to operationalize and measure the hierarchical nature of moral development.