Set in rural Uganda and using Lowenfeld (1947–1957) developmental stages model as a theoretical framework, this study describes an early childhood literacy project (Goodman and Dent, 2019) and the ...impact of the Storytelling/Story-Acting (STSA) play-based intervention on participating children’s drawings. Ugandan children ages 3–5 were randomly assigned to participate in either the STSA play intervention (n = 63) or a story-reading activity (n = 60) for one hour twice weekly for six months. All children were assessed for school readiness skills before and after the six-month intervention. Two-hundred sixty-three drawings of four Ugandan children (two from the control group and two from the intervention group) who demonstrated the greatest change on a measure of school readiness were selected from the larger sample for analysis using the Formal Elements and Content rating scales. All four children demonstrated important deviations from Lowenfeld’s developmental stages model, including a vertical baseline and faceless human figures observed in most of the drawings. Formal Elements but not Content changed over time. Girls performed differently from boys on both Formal Elements and Content. Artistic progression is relative to the cultural milieu in which the child is embedded.
•The formal elements of Ugandan preschool children’s drawings changed over six months.•The content of Ugandan preschool children’s drawings did not change over six months.•Ugandan preschool children demonstrated the use of a vertical baseline and no faces.•Researchers and therapists can use drawings to assess change in non-Western cultures.
Conscious education, as a deliberate, planned and organized pedagogical process ensures the acquisition of knowledge, skills and habits in the function of developing learning, expanding and enriching ...human cognition. At the preschool age, education, through the development of general and special preparations, enables the child to perform life's functions, humanize his nature and adopt and cultivate the foundations of the culture of civilization. The base for the transfer of material and spiritual values of the community is made up of sociocultural systems: symbolization and communication, systems of knowledge from science, technique, technology, work and production, artistic forms of expression, value and ethical attitudes. Through models of daily living, forms of play and learning, the child masters the program of preschool upbringing and education, which should eventually develop their competencies (through learning to learn - for the mother language and another language, mathematical, scientific, technological, digital, social knowledge, cultural awareness and initiative). Research with the aim of improving the projects was carried out using a descriptive method, analysing the content of ten published projects, which identified their characteristics: educational content, types and combinations of implemented activities, used educational methods and specific educational competencies that were supported. The results speak of the use of limited educational contents of only one educational area, weak integration of contents, no changes in the application of the methodical repertoire (compared to the period until 2018) and favouring the development of children's scientific competences.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND
Preschool children are recommended to spend at least 15 minutes/hour (25% time) in light‐to‐vigorous physical activity (total physical activity, TPA). Preschool provider ...practices, such as whether children are put in small group or whole‐group activities, are likely to affect children's TPA levels during preschool. The current study characterized the pattern of physical activity across the preschool day, and examined the relationship of location and social arrangement to TPA.
METHODS
Fifteen days from 8 preschool classrooms in 2 preschool centers were video‐recorded, and children (N = 73, age = 3‐6 years, M = 4.36 ± 0.85, Boys = 47%) wore accelerometers for the duration of the preschool day. We observed contextual variables of time (ie, morning or afternoon), location (ie, indoor or outdoor), and for a subsample, social arrangement (ie, activity centers, small group, whole group).
RESULTS
Across the whole day, children spent 69.5 ± 12.4% time sedentary/inactive and 30.5 ± 13.5% time in TPA. Children spent a significantly greater percentage of time in TPA outdoors, compared to indoors (t = 10.00, p < .001), and while in small groups compared to whole groups (t = 3.35, p = .009).
CONCLUSION
Children spent approximately 30% of the preschool day in TPA. Providing more time outdoors and restructuring preschool activities from whole group to small group could increase the amount of TPA that children accumulate during preschool.
Background: It is very important to pay attention to the development of children in different social dimensions and to take preventive measures against the occurrence of behavioral problems at an ...early age. Therefore, it will be helpful to identify targeted and effective intervention programs in this field. So far, various methods have been used to reduce children's behavioral problems, However, there is a research gap regarding the comparison of the effectiveness of the social skills training package based on puppet show and Walker's social skills training program on children's behavioral problems. Aims: The present study was conducted with the aim of comparing the effectiveness of social skills training based on puppet shows and Walker's social skills training program on preschool children's behavioral problems. Methods: The current research design was a semi-experimental type of pre-test, post-test with control group. The statistical population of the research included all preschool children in Kerman city, from among them a sample of 60 people was selected as available and they were placed in two experimental groups and one control group. One of the experimental groups of training through the social skills training package based on puppet shows (10 sessions) and the other experimental group underwent 11 sessions of training through Walker's training program (1983). The data collection tool was Gresham & Elliot (1990) Social Skills Rating System. The research data was analyzed by univariate and multivariate covariance analysis using SPSS-24 software. Results: The results of covariance analysis in the present study showed that both intervention methods were effective in reducing behavioral problems. However, the effectiveness of social skills training based on puppet shows in internalizing and hyperactivity problems was higher than Walker's method (P< 0.05). Conclusion: According to the obtained results, it seems that the use of intervention methods based on puppet shows are more effective in improving the behavioral problems of preschool children than purely mental methods, Therefore, preschool teachers and child psychologists can use the mentioned method to reduce children's behavioral problems.
•We examined thresholds in child care quality and child outcomes.•Quality thresholds existed related to children's behavioral outcomes.•Evidence of threshold effects was not found for academic ...outcomes and working memory.
This study examined whether a minimum level of preschool quality (threshold) is needed in order for a relationship to exist between preschool quality and children's academic, behavioral, and working memory in a sample of children from low-wealth rural communities where quality child care has been found to be lower than more urban communities. Participants included 849 children from two high-poverty, rural regions. Preschool quality was rated using the CLASS observational measure. Child outcomes included direct assessments of early language, mathematics, and working memory, as well as teacher ratings of attention, emotion regulation, problem behaviors, and peer relationships. Analyses included piecewise regression analyses that tested a priori specified cut-points and flexible b-spline analyses that tested for thresholds empirically. Results indicated some evidence for quality thresholds, suggesting that quality was related to children's behavioral outcomes above, but not below, a cut-point. Language, literacy, and working memory did not show evidence of threshold effects. Results are discussed in the context of prior mixed evidence for child care quality thresholds in other samples of predominantly low-income preschoolers in center-based child care in more urban areas.
In the last few decades, workshop animation has greatly contributed to the artistic expression of preschool children. The ways of development and the methods that are used each time in a workshop ...vary depending on the case. In this study, it is particularly interesting to note that at this specific workshop animation, 50 children of different ages and nationalities, from different regions of Athens participated during the summer. The reactions of 25 children aged 5 to 6 years and the way of working with older children were taken into consideration and examined. This action took place within the Open Schools programs, an institution that offers free creative participation to children who, due to financial problems because of the economic crisis, were unable to leave Athens in the summer and/or pay similar private institutions. Despite the exceptionally difficult circumstances preschool children were able to follow the stop motion animation process they played, had fun and created their own movie.
A narrative story-stem task was used to evaluate the efficacy of two competing, developmentally informed preventive interventions for maltreated preschoolers and their mothers designed to modify ...children's internal representations of self and of self in relation to other. One hundred and twenty-two mothers and their preschoolers (87 maltreated and 35 nonmaltreated) served as participants. Maltreating families were randomly assigned to either the preschooler-parent psychotherapy (PPP, n = 23), psychoeducational home visitation (PHV, n = 34), or community standard (CS, n = 30) intervention group at baseline. Thirty-five nonmaltreating (NC) families served as comparisons. Narratives were administered to children at baseline and at the postintervention evaluation. Children in the PPP intervention evidenced more of a decline in maladaptive maternal representations over time than PHV and CS children and displayed a greater decrease in negative self-representations than CS, PHV, and NC children. Also, the mother-child relationship expectations of PPP children became more positive over the course of the intervention, as compared to NC and PHV participants. These results suggest that an attachment-theory informed model of intervention (PPP) is more effective at improving representations of self and of caregivers than is a didactic model of intervention directed at parenting skills. Findings are discussed with respect to their implications for developmental theory, with a specific focus on attachment theory and internal working models of relationships.
The growing acknowledgement of the value of listening to children's views and experiences in social research, popularly termed as “listening to their voices,” brings with it methodological ...consequences. Regarding children as expert informants about their own lives carries with it the simultaneous call for researchers to be experts in developing and employing appropriate strategies that can effectively elicit the insights that children can bring to a research topic. With younger children, the use of participatory methodologies has been foregrounded as the key to unlocking their potential to contribute rich and useful perspectives to inform research into their lives. This article explores the usefulness of employing preschoolers' drawings within the context of a co-construction process to facilitate the children's construction of ideas and reinforce their voices in research. The case is made that the quality of the dialogical engagement is as important as the drawing itself, and both visual images and the verbal exchanges are central to the children's meaning-making process. In the co-construction process, both adult and child are (ideally) equal players and the resulting dialogical process plays a major role in the constitution of the phenomena. The role of the researcher as the co-constructor can be a challenging one because it entails engaging and supporting children's views and the expression of these views. The discussion and illustrations from the first author's research projects contribute to the literature base on positioning preschool children as valid social actors in their communities.
We operate through an ethos of empowerment of all participants, and aim for participatory research practice which has at its heart an active involvement in promoting the rights of children as citizens with voice and power. (Pascal & Bertram, 2009, p. 249)
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This study focuses on moral work-in-interaction between teachers and children during a circle time episode, focusing on a moral problem related to the children's peer play activities. The data are ...drawn from ethnographic research combined with video-recordings of routine activities in a Swedish preschool. Using an ethnomethodological conversation analytical approach examining talk-in-interaction in its’ sequential and social context. In the particular case the moral problem concerns a girl’s emotional reactions (i.e. being sad) from being excluded from peer play. The particular problem is dealt with by the teachers through a) holding other children publically accountable and b) making them share the girl’s negative feelings through the telling of hypothetical scenarios. At the same time, the children navigate from a subordinate position and can be seen as doing different forms of moral defense work. In so doing they manifest their own moral agenda, which is different from the teachers’ or the institutional agenda. Thus, the interactional moral work in the circle time episode can be described as an encounter between two worlds or orders. On the one side an institutional order, represented by the teachers, morally fostering children, and on the other side the children´s peer culture, where children learn to use different strategies to handle the moral work of the preschool teachers.
To examine the stability of psychiatric disorders with onset in preschool years.
Five hundred ten children aged 2 through 5 years enrolled initially, with 344 participating in a third wave of data ...collection 42 through 48 months later. The test batteries used for diagnoses varied by child's age, but they included the Child Behavior Checklist, developmental evaluation, Rochester Adaptive Behavior Inventory and a play session (under age 7 years), and a structured interview (Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents, for parent and child) (ages 7 and older). Consensus DSM-III-R diagnoses were assigned using best-estimate procedures.
Intraclass correlations were 0.497 for emotional disorders, 0.718 for disruptive disorders, 0.457 for other diagnoses, and 0.544 for disruptive disorders comorbid with another disorder, indicating moderate stability for all groups of disorders. More than 50% of the children who were aged 2 through 3 years at wave 1 continued to have some psychiatric disorder at wave 2 or 3. Rates were higher for children aged 4 through 5 initially; approximately two thirds were cases subsequently. Odds ratios indicate that having an emotional or disruptive disorder is a strong risk factor for later diagnoses.
While some preschool children in primary care "grow out of" their disorder, an equally large number do not; this finding supports the need for early detection and intervention.
PDF
