Currently, we understand much about how children’s brains attend to and learn from information presented while they are alone, viewing a screen – but less about how interpersonal social influences ...are substantiated in the brain. Here, we consider research that examines how social behaviors affect not one, but both partners in a dyad. We review studies that measured interpersonal neural entrainment during early social interaction, considering two ways of measuring entrainment: concurrent entrainment (e.g., ‘when A is high, B is high’ – also known as synchrony) and sequential entrainment (‘changes in A forward-predict changes in B’). We discuss possible causes of interpersonal neural entrainment, and consider whether it is merely an epiphenomenon, or whether it plays an independent, mechanistic role in early attention and learning.
Social factors exert transient influences on the brains of both partners during an interaction.Interpersonal neural entrainment during early learning interactions has been documented at multiple temporal scales, replicating findings with adults and animals.Neural entrainment can be a consequence of behavioral coordination, but it can also arise in the absence of behavioral coordination: shared understanding involves temporally co-occurring patterns of brain activity.Neural entrainment may influence learning in multiple ways; for example, by allowing the sender to ensure information delivered arrives at an optimal time for encoding by the receiver.
•Executive function (EF) and motor skills are important for early learning.•EF and motor skills codevelop in children in bidirectional and synergistic ways.•Research should examine how skills develop ...together to promote learning.
A considerable body of research indicates that children’s executive function (EF) skills and related school readiness constructs are important for early learning and long-term academic success. This review focuses on EF and a related construct, motor skills with a focus on visuomotor integration, as being foundational for learning, and describes how these skills codevelop in young children in bidirectional and synergistic ways. The review discusses definitional and conceptual issues, connects EF and visuomotor integration to relevant theoretical perspectives, discusses measurement issues and advancements, and reviews intervention evidence to support the malleability of these skills in young children. Discussion emphasizes how these skills develop together and suggests that research examining children’s learning from a codevelopment perspective can help promote children’s health and well-being.
Objective
This study examined associations between marital adjustment and children's learning behaviors, as well as the potential mediation effects of maternal involvement and parenting on these ...associations in Chinese contexts.
Background
The family is a vital setting for children's early learning behaviors, encompassing self‐efficacy in learning and approaches to learning. Marital adjustment, as well as maternal involvement and maternal parenting, are crucial factors in the family setting. However, there is a paucity of research on the pathway mechanism between these three family factors and children's early learning behaviors.
Method
There were 750 mothers of Chinese preschoolers (48.24% girls, Mage = 5.94 years, SD = 1.43) in three provinces—Fujian, Sichuan, and Xinjiang—who participated in the study. Mothers completed questionnaires related to marital adjustment, maternal involvement, maternal parenting, and children's learning behaviors. Structural equation models were estimated to test the hypothesized paths.
Results
The results revealed a positive association between higher marital adjustment and improved children's self‐efficacy in learning (β = .10, p = .004) and approaches to learning (β = .15, p < .001), with maternal involvement (for self‐efficacy, β = .25, p < .001; for approaches to learning, β = .23, p < .001) and parenting (for self‐efficacy, β = .25, p < .001; for approaches to learning, β = .31, p < .001) recognized as significant mediators in this relationship.
Conclusions
The study indicated that marital adjustment, maternal involvement, and parenting have significant direct and indirect effects on children's early learning behaviors.
Implications
Given the research findings, marital adjustment is worth considering when recognizing children's early learning. Furthermore, parents may be encouraged to understand proper involvement and parenting practices with their children. Briefly, these findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge on how family variables are related to children's learning behaviors.
•Chronic absenteeism is widespread among pre-kindergarten students.•Students entering pre-kindergarten with the lowest skills miss the most school days.•Pre-k students with higher absences have lower ...kindergarten readiness scores.•Chronically absent pre-kindergarteners miss more school in future grades.•Students chronically absent for several years need reading intervention by grade 3.
Consistent school attendance is a critical component of education. Although research suggests that high rates of absenteeism is a significant issue for many students, minimal evidence exists focusing on absences among the nation’s youngest students − those in pre-kindergarten. This study focused on students in a large, urban district and examined the prevalence of pre-kindergarten chronic absence for different student subgroups, its relationship to learning outcomes during pre-kindergarten, and its association with ongoing attendance patterns and learning outcomes through second grade. Results indicated that absence in pre-kindergarten was widespread, particularly among African American students and those who entered pre-kindergarten with the lowest skills. Chronically absent pre-kindergarten students—those who were absent 10% or more of their enrolled days—displayed lower levels of academic and behavioral kindergarten readiness and were more likely to be chronically absent in subsequent grades. By third grade, students chronically absent for multiple years exhibited the need for significant intervention to read at grade level. These findings suggest that providing supports to improve attendance in pre-kindergarten and early elementary years has the potential to reduce achievement gaps and redirect struggling students onto the pathway toward educational success.
HEAR
University of Westminster Press eBooks,
2023
eBook
Open access
Hearing is an intricate modality of sensory perception. It is continuously enfolded in the surroundings in which it takes place. While passive in its disposition, hearing is integral to the movement ...and fluctuations of one’s environment. At all times, hearing remains open, (in)active but attuned to the present and continuously immersed in the murmur of its background. A delicate perception that is always situated but fundamentally overarching and extended into the open. Hearing is an immanent modality of being in and with the world. Beyond the capacity of sensory perception, hearing is also the ultimate juridical act, a sense-making activity that adjudicates and informs the spatio-temporal acoustics of justice. This penultimate volume of ‘Law and the Senses’ gathers contributions from across different disciplines working on the relationship between law and hearing, the human vocalisations and non-human echolocations, the spatial and temporal conditions in which hearing takes place, as well as the forms of order and control that listening entails. Through notions and practices of improvisation and noise, attunement and audibility sonic spatiality and urban sonicity they explore, challenge and expand the structural and sensorial qualities of law. Moreover, they recognise how hearing directs us to perceiving and understanding the intrinsic acoustic sphere of simultaneous relations, which challenge and break the normative distinctions that law informs and maintains. In an attempt to hear the ambiguous, indefinable and unembodied nature of hearing, as well as its objects – sound and silence – this volume approaches hearing as both an ontological and epistemological device to think with and about law.
Abstract
State Early Learning Standards (ELS) are multi-function tools that inform early childhood instruction and practices. Using an established framework of early numerical development, this study ...assessed the prevalence of number, number relations, and number operations indicators in ELS, specifically indicators of counting, numeral knowledge, cardinality, relations among quantity and number, and operations. The type of quantity representation and the set sizes, or upper limits, assigned to counting, subitizing, and cardinality were also summarized. State ELS were organized into two groups: Group 1 (n = 23) included states with one set of indicators for preschool (e.g., ages three to five years) and Group 2 (n = 27) included states with at least two sets of indicators for preschool (e.g., 36 to 48 months and 48 to 60 months). Key findings include: (1) how states organize their ELS is associated with level of consensus for the upper limits and set sizes associated with counting and cardinality; (2) notable variability in the prevalence of early number indicators with gaps for indicators of advanced counting, cardinal principle knowledge, symbolic number relations, and ordering; and, (3) differences in how ELS address the type of quantity representation. Results are intended to highlight strengths and shortcomings of state ELS for number, number relations, and number operations and to offer considerations for future revisions.
•We apply a global health framework to analyze political prioritization of ECE.•ECE has gained traction on the national policy agendas in our four focus countries.•Political economy conditions are ...insufficient to ensure adequate resources to ECE.•Civil society mobilization is relatively weak, and champions for ECE are uncommon.•We suggest several actions to improve the political positioning of ECE in LMICs.
Despite a growing evidence base and global consensus on the importance of Early Childhood Education (ECE), it remains under-resourced and comparatively neglected as a policy issue. This paper seeks to better understand which factors facilitate or impede efforts to make ECE a political priority in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), applying a framework used primarily in global public health. We draw on a comparative analysis of four countries: Ethiopia, Liberia, Pakistan (Punjab Province), and Tanzania. Even though each of these countries has undertaken recent, concrete efforts to scale ECE, the political economy conditions to support sustained commitment are only partially present. National policymakers have responded to global efforts to advance early childhood development, and ideas about the benefits of ECE have gained significant traction. With few exceptions, however, civil society mobilization around ECE is relatively weak, and focusing events and prominent champions for ECE are uncommon. Taken together, these factors are consistent with a strong rhetorical commitment to early learning but a lack of sustained follow-through and resource provision.
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