Searching for the Structure of Coping Skinner, Ellen A; Edge, Kathleen; Altman, Jeffrey ...
Psychological bulletin,
03/2003, Letnik:
129, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
From
analyzing 100 assessments of coping, the authors critiqued strategies and
identified best practices for constructing category systems. From current
systems, a list of 400 ways of coping was ...compiled. For constructing lower
order categories, the authors concluded that confirmatory factor analysis
should replace the 2 most common strategies (exploratory factor analysis
and rational sorting). For higher order categories, they recommend that the
3 most common distinctions (problem- vs. emotion-focused, approach vs.
avoidance, and cognitive vs. behavioral) no longer be used. Instead, the
authors recommend hierarchical systems of action types (e.g., proximity
seeking, accommodation). From analysis of 6 such systems, 13 potential core
families of coping were identified. Future steps involve deciding how to
organize these families, using their functional homogeneity and
distinctiveness, and especially their links to adaptive processes.
This study explored the dynamics of motivational development across late elementary and early middle school. Using longitudinal data from a cross-section of fifth to seventh-grade students, analyses ...examined whether parents’ and teachers’ warm involvement shows unique and/or mediated effects on students’ academic engagement and whether engagement feeds back into adults’ continued involvement. Parent and teacher involvement each predicted changes in adolescents’ engagement; parental involvement also played an indirect role via student–teacher relationships; and students who were more engaged reported that adults responded with increasing levels of involvement. These models provide support for a reciprocal dynamic that could lead to virtuous cycles increasing in both involvement and engagement or to vicious cycles amplifying disaffection and withdrawal of involvement over time. Future studies, using time series or observational data, could further unpack these dynamics, examining processes of transmission, mediators, and effects on the longer-term development of academic engagement.
The present study examined the interconnections between parental motivational support and children’s academic coping as a bidirectional system, with each social partner shaping changes in the other, ...using a two-wave sample of 1,020 students in grades three through six, aged 8–13, measured at the beginning and end of one school year in a school district in the northeastern United States. Using a motivational model of academic coping that specified both core ways of coping and a set of interpersonal motivational resources that parents can offer their children, cross-lagged panel path models examined whether initial levels of parent support (a combination of involvement, structure, and autonomy support) predicted changes in both children’s total coping profile and their individual adaptive and maladaptive ways of coping, while simultaneously investigating whether children’s coping profile and individual ways predicted changes in parenting. Results for children’s total coping profile and individual adaptive ways supported hypotheses about reciprocal effects, whereas findings for individual maladaptive ways of coping were more differentiated: Parenting predicted changes in coping for all maladaptive ways except rumination, but only concealment, self-pity, and projection predicted changes in parenting. Results did not differ by grade or gender. Potential avenues for future research, limitations, and implications for parenting practice were discussed.
Although motivational theories agree that environmental factors (like interpersonal relationships and pedagogical practices) are crucial in shaping students’ motivational development, few ...comprehensive conceptualizations of motivational contexts have been proposed. Instead, individual theories tend to focus on the contextual antecedents of the specific self-processes each prioritizes (e.g., self-efficacy, achievement goals). This has produced a cloud of disparate contextual factors that practitioners and interventionists, trying to apply work from the field as a whole, can find fragmented and confusing. Drawing on bioecological, phenomenological, ecocultural, and situative models, we outline an overarching framework that views motivational contexts as
complex dynamic multilevel social ecologies
. We explore three ways such a framework can help create a more comprehensive and comprehensible picture of the contextual antecedents identified by current theories of motivation. First, we examine the complexity inherent in
microsystems
, like the classroom, and propose three strategies for identifying motivationally relevant features. Second, we focus on students’ multiple worlds or
mesosystems
and outline different ways they can be organized and operate to shape motivation. Third, we consider
macrosystems
and highlight how societal forces, organized in interlocking systems of risk and resources, create stratified and unequal niches that differentially support the motivation of students from diverse backgrounds. Consistent with other researchers, we argue that such overarching frameworks are both integrative and generative. They not only offer places for the range of factors already identified by motivational theories, but also suggest avenues for discovering additional factors and examining how they work together to shape student motivation and its development.
Introduction
This study sought to examine how warm involvement from parents and teachers contributes to the development of students' academic engagement, and whether the relative contributions of ...adults differ as students begin the transition to middle school.
Methods
Trivariate latent growth curve modeling was used to examine 1011 third–sixth graders' (95% White, 52.7% female) reports of parent and teacher involvement and engagement across fall and spring of 2 consecutive school years in the United States.
Results
Even though engagement showed different patterns of normative change across grades, parents' and teachers' initial levels and changes in involvement uniquely and positively predicted initial levels and changes in student engagement, respectively. However, initial levels of adult involvement made unique negative contributions to engagement trajectories for students in some grade segments, especially those whose engagement was changing most rapidly. Students with higher initial levels of adult involvement were more likely to experience losses in involvement the following school year, making them susceptible to declines in engagement, even though they remained higher in engagement than students with lower levels of adult involvement.
Conclusions
These findings suggest that to maintain or promote engagement over late elementary and early middle school, students need “continuity of caregiving,” in which involvement from both adults is sustained or augmented over the time that engagement trajectories are unfolding.
Many subareas share a common interest in students’ motivational resilience, defined broadly as patterns of action that allow students to constructively deal with, overcome, recover, and learn from ...encounters with academic obstacles and failures. However, research in each of these areas often progresses in relative isolation, and studies rarely utilize developmental or social-contextual approaches. As a result, we do not yet have a clear understanding of how to help children and adolescents develop a rich and flexible repertoire of tools to deal productively with everyday academic challenges and difficulties. In this article, we knit together these disparate areas of work to create an integrated developmental and social-contextual framework that can guide the future study of these processes. First, we summarize nine areas of work that focus on students’ actions on the ground when they encounter academic difficulties: academic resilience, mastery versus helplessness, engagement and re-engagement, academic coping, self-regulated learning, adaptive help seeking, emotion regulation, and buoyancy as well as tenacity, perseverance, and productive persistence. In each area, we highlight work that is explicitly developmental and that depicts key social-contextual factors that shape motivational resilience. Second, we sketch an overarching social-contextual and developmental framework that holds a place for each of these processes. Third, we identify multiple areas where cross-fertilization among researchers can contribute to improved educational practice and study of the development of motivational resilience. An overarching goal of this article (and the special section more generally) is to take first steps toward “field building” on this crucial topic.
Models of self-regulated learning and of children's coping both consider help-seeking an adaptive response to academic problems, yet students do not always seek help when it is needed, and ...help-seeking generally declines across early adolescence. A study of 765 children in elementary and middle school (Grades 3-6) during fall and spring of the same school year investigated whether motivational resources predicted help-seeking and whether losses in motivational supports across the middle school transition mirrored age declines. As predicted, 3 motivational self-perceptions were tightly correlated with coping in fall and spring; relatedness was the primary predictor of increases in help-seeking, whereas a sense of incompetence predicted increases in concealment. Teacher reports of motivational support also predicted changes in student coping and were mediated by children's self-perceptions. Analyses of reciprocal effects of students' help-seeking and concealment on changes in teacher support corroborated hypothesized cycles in which motivationally "rich" children, by constructively seeking help, become "richer," whereas motivationally "poor" children, by concealing their difficulties, become "poorer." Age differences in children's motivational resources across the transition to middle school paralleled age differences in help-seeking and concealment.
Mindfulness training (MT) for teachers has become popular, yet gaps remain in our understanding of the time-course of the impacts of MT on teacher- and classroom-outcomes; the generalizability of MT ...impacts on elementary versus secondary teachers; and how characteristics of teachers and schools may moderate the impacts of MT. In this randomized-controlled trial, we examine the near- and longer-term impacts of the Mindfulness-Based Emotional Balance (MBEB) program with regard to improving middle school teachers' mindfulness, self-compassion, occupational health and well-being, and quality of interactions with students in their self-nominated "most stressful classroom." The sample included 58 sixth through eighth grade teachers randomized to condition (n = 29 MBEB and n = 29 Waitlist Control) who were assessed at baseline, postprogram, and follow-up (4 months later). Results showed that compared with controls, MBEB teachers reported greater occupational self-compassion and less job stress and anxiety at postprogram and follow-up; as well as less emotional exhaustion and depression at follow-up. No observed differences in quality of teachers' interactions with students in their most stressful classrooms (classroom organization or emotional support) were found at postprogram. At follow-up, however, results showed MBEB teachers had better classroom organization than control teachers. Exploratory analyses showed that longer-term impacts of MBEB were moderated by teaching experience and school type, with newer teachers (≤5 years) and teachers in Grades 6-8 schools showing more beneficial personal and classroom outcomes at follow-up compared with more experienced teachers or those working in Grades K-8 schools, respectively. Implications for future research and teacher professional development are discussed.
Educational Impact and Implications StatementResults of this study show that mindfulness training (MT) for middle school teachers is acceptable and effective, and that both teacher- and classroom-level benefits of MT accrue over time. Specifically, we found that the Mindfulness-Based Emotional Balance (MBEB) program was well accepted by middle school educators-teachers in this study attended 80% or more of program sessions, found the instructor to be genuine, trustworthy and competent, and engaged in some formal practice of mindfulness between group sessions. The MBEB program was also effective in that middle school teachers who engaged in the program reported lower job-related stress and fewer feelings of anxiety immediately after the program and 4 months later, and also felt less emotionally exhausted and depressed 4 months later as well compared with control teachers. Based on observers' classroom ratings, we also found that teachers who participated in the MT had better classroom organization in their "most stressful classroom of adolescents" at follow-up. These beneficial teacher and classroom outcomes were strongest for newer teachers (5 years or less of teaching experience) and for teachers working in middle (Grades 6-8) versus K-8 schools who undertook the training, especially at follow-up during a new school year. Programs like MBEB may be a useful part of ongoing secondary teacher professional development efforts aimed at stress management and the improvement of classroom teaching, and may be especially beneficial in these regards for secondary teachers who are newer to the teaching profession, and those who are working in Grades 6-8 middle schools.
Review Zimmer-Gembeck, Melanie J.; Webb, Haley J.; Pepping, Christopher A. ...
International journal of behavioral development,
01/2017, Letnik:
41, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Attachment theorists have described the parent–child attachment relationship as a foundation for the emergence and development of children’s capacity for emotion regulation and coping with stress. ...The purpose of this review was to summarize the existing research addressing this issue. We identified 23 studies that employed validated assessments of attachment, which were not based on self-report questionnaires, and separated the summary into findings for toddlers/preschool, children, and adolescents. Although most associations were weak and only a minority of the multiple possible associations tested was supported in each study, all studies (but one) reported at least one significant association between attachment and emotion regulation or coping. The evidence pointed to the regulatory and coping problems of toddlers showing signs of ambivalent attachment or the benefits of secure (relative to insecure) attachment for toddlers, children, and adolescents. Toddlers who showed signs of avoidant attachment relied more on self-related regulation (or less social-oriented regulation and coping), but it was not clear whether these responses were maladaptive. There was little information available regarding associations of ambivalent attachment with school-age children’s or adolescents’ emotion regulation. There were also few studies that assessed disorganized attachment.
In response to growing interest in mindfulness as a support for educators, the current study sought to create and test a new multidimensional and multi-informant measure of teacher mindfulness in the ...classroom. To counter some of the limitations of context-general self-reports, we designed two theoretically based classroom-specific measures that capture the experience and expression of mindful teacher behavior from the perspective of teachers and students. Drawing on emerging consensus from experts on mindfulness in education, the measures incorporated three dimensions of mindfulness, namely, Calm, Clear, and Kind teacher behavior in the classroom, as well as their antitheses, namely, Reactive, Distracted, and Critical teacher behavior. Utilizing data from 78 sixth- to eighth-grade teachers and 550 of their students, teacher- and student-report item sets tapping these dimensions were tested for reliability and validity across three time points. Based on confirmatory factor, reliability, structural invariance, and correlational analyses, subscales generally demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties, cross-year stabilities, convergent and criterion validity with multiple established measures, and some overlap across reporters. In terms of connections to observer ratings from the CLASS-S, teacher subscales showed consistent but modest connections, whereas student subscales showed higher correlations (especially at time 2), suggesting that students and observers converged in their perceptions of teachers’ expressions of mindfulness. Possible improvements to both measures as well as implications for future research on teacher mindfulness are discussed.
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