This study investigates the patterns of relations between beliefs, emotions, and job satisfaction in 249 Italian in-service teachers. Participants were assessed on their growth and fixed mindsets, ...self-efficacy beliefs, emotions associated with various components of their professional engagement and job satisfaction. Mediational analyses shed light on the mediating role of teaching and role emotions in the relation between beliefs and job satisfaction. Specifically, teachers' high self-efficacy beliefs positively impact on job satisfaction if negative teaching and role emotions are contained at low levels.
This study was conducted on a population of primary school children including bilingual language minority (BLM) children with L2-Italian and a variety of languages as L1 (e.g., Chinese, Albanian, ...Latin), and Italian-speaking monolingual children. The variety of languages ecologically reflects the nowadays composition of classes in the Italian school system. The aims were to investigate in both linguistic groups: (1) the developmental patterns of lexical, reading and spelling skills; (2) the pattern of predictive relations between lexical, reading and spelling skills. 159 primary school children from Grade 2 to Grade 5 participated in the study: BLM (
n
= 80) and monolingual (
n
= 79) children aged between 7 and 11 years. Each participant completed a vocabulary task (lexical skills), a text reading task (reading accuracy and reading speed) and a text dictation task (orthographic errors). ANOVA statistics showed the comparison of patterns between monolingual and BLM children in lexical, reading, and writing skills. Results show lower performances in lexical, reading and spelling skills in BLM children learning Italian as a second language compared to monolingual peers. Second, partial correlations performed separately for monolinguals and BLM with lexical ability as a control variable, illustrated that all variables correlated with each other in both groups. This result provides the option of performing hierarchical regressions. Finally, hierarchical regression analyses showed that the pattern of predictive relations between lexical, reading and spelling skills is the same across language groups, with the key role of orthographic accuracy as the pivotal process around which reading and lexical skills are built.
This study investigates the developmental pattern and relationships between oral narrative textual skills, spelling, and written narrative textual skills in monolingual and bilingual ...language-minority (BLM) children, L1-Chinese and L2-Italian. The aims were to investigate in monolingual and BLM children: (1) the developmental patterns of oral and writing skills across primary school years; (2) the pattern of relationships (direct and mediated) between oral narrative textual competence, spelling skills, and written narrative textual competence with age and socio-economic status (SES) taken under control. In total, 141 primary school children from grades 2 to 5 in Central Italy (44% BLM, 56% monolinguals) aged between 7 and 11 years (M-age = 8.59, SD = 1.13; 41% girls, 59% boys) obtained scores for oral and written narrative textual competence, spelling accuracy in dictation, and written texts. One-way ANOVA and ANOVA with robust method (Welch test) analyses and Bonferroni’s correction showed that BLM children had poorer spelling skills in dictation and written narrative textual competence (i.e., text structure) than their monolingual peers. After preliminary correlation analysis, the results of hierarchical regression showed that the relationship between oral and written narrative textual competence is completely mediated by spelling accuracy in BLM children. These results suggest that adequate performance in written narrative textual competence depends on adequate spelling accuracy in writing stories. The Sobel test verified the power of this mediation. In monolinguals, the strongest predictor of written narrative textual competence is oral narrative textual competence. This relation is stronger in older children whose spelling skills are automatized. The identified pattern of relationships shows a complex network of oral and written processes. The scarce spelling skills characterizing BLM children may explain why spelling skills determine a low written narrative textual level. Scarce spelling skills absorb cognitive resources, hindering high-level cognitive processes that regulate narrative production. In monolinguals, the medium of writing does not impact narrative textual competence. Children’s oral narrative textual competence easily transfers into their written narrative productions. These findings have implications for the assessment and instruction of literacy skills in young BLM children and their monolingual peers.
This randomized trial study aimed to analyze the efficacy of two different school-based interventions—normal preschool literacy teaching, and the PASSI intervention carried out for different ...durations (12 versus 30 weeks)—on notational knowledge of bilingual language-minority (BLM) preschoolers and their monolingual peers, after controlling their linguistic background and socio- economic status. A total of 251 children aged 4–5 years (M age = 4 years and 8 months; SD age = 6 months; 49% males, 51% females) were recruited from 19 classes in five preschools and randomly assigned to three groups that corresponded to different notational-focused interventions: (1) normal preschool literacy teaching (Condition 1;
n
= 47); (2) the PASSI intervention carried out for 12 weeks (Condition 2;
n
= 119); and (3) the PASSI intervention carried out for 30 weeks (Condition 3;
n
= 85). We collected two waves of data before and after the interventions regarding notational knowledge and phonological skills. Using the mixed ANOVA, we found that the PASSI intervention (both durations of 12 and 30 weeks) led to a significantly higher level of notational knowledge in BLM children and their monolingual peers. In addition, we observed that with the PASSI intervention carried out for 30 weeks, the baseline difference between BLMs and their monolingual peers was nullified. This study demonstrates that well-designed, school-based programs can benefit language-minority children by supporting their emergent notational knowledge. This paper also discusses implications for bilingual education policymaking.
This study investigated the mediating role of conceptions of learning in the relationship between metacognitive skills/strategies and academic outcomes among middle-school students. The self-report ..."Learning Conceptions Questionnaire" (LCQ) and "Metacognitive questionnaire on the method of study" (QMS-in Italian) were administered to 136 middle-school students and their academic outcomes were collected. Correlation analyses revealed that within metacognitive skills/strategies only self-assessment was positively correlated with academic outcomes. Mediation analysis indicated that a conception of learning as internal attribution of success and failure was significantly involved as mediator in the relationship between metacognitive skills/strategies and academic outcomes. This study permitted to advance our knowledge about the relationship between metacognitive skills/strategies and academic outcomes and it has opened the way to practical implications.
Guided by two perspectives, one theoretical, and the other, methodological, we assume that social interactions provide organizing principles for transforming natural human growth into cultural ...development. From birth onward, the healthy child is primed to be
in transaction
with their caregivers, their surroundings, co-constructing the narrative, the
textum,
of their life. We see becoming literate, putting "Minds on Paper
"
, as a context-embedded process, exemplifying the widespread processes through which young children co-construct and share their meanings of the world in which they live. Our quasi-ecological methodology, “A Day in the Life (DITL)” is accomplished by filming an entire
day
in the daily lives of participants. This approach facilitates capturing emergent ‘literacy’ as ‘literacies’, or the ability to grasp the variously distributed symbolic nature of environmental signs, drawings, musical notations, numbers and see them, as they develop, as expressions of their own minds in concert with the minds of others, across different contexts or settings.
This study employs the scale of Value from Pictorial Assessment of Interpersonal Relationships (PAIR) to investigate the links between the importance attributed by primary students to their teachers ...and two independent measures of scholastic wellbeing, provided by teachers and parents. During middle childhood, the teacher is one of the most significant adults with whom children interact daily; a student–teacher relationship warm and free from excessive dependency and conflict is very important for children wellbeing; however, children’s recognition of teacher importance as an authority figure has been seldom studied. Children aged 7–11 years were individually asked to draw themselves and one of their teachers in two situations (relational Wellbeing and relational Distress); the scale of Value from PAIR was used as a proxy of the importance attributed to teachers in each situation. Teachers completed the Student–Teacher Relationship Scale for Closeness, Conflict, and Dependency of each child; parents answered two items about their children’s School Adjustment. All the study variables were firstly analyzed to check gender and age differences. Boys valorized more than girls the teacher’s figure; however, teachers perceived more Closeness and less Conflict with girls. Dependency and Conflict decreased with age, as well as (albeit slightly) School Adjustment. To assess the links between pictorial valorization of the teacher in Wellbeing and Distress and teachers’ and parents’ evaluations, four separate hierarchical regressions were performed, namely, Closeness, Dependency, Conflict, and School Adjustment, controlling children’s sex and age. The teacher’s pictorial Value in Wellbeing appeared to be related to Closeness and School Adjustment, while a negative relationship emerged between Value and Dependency in Distress. In sum, the recognition of the teacher’s role as an authority figure does not hinder a warm student–teacher relationship and impacts positively on school adjustment. In situations of Distress, dependent pupils showed a diminished appreciation of the teacher’s importance, possibly as a result of a defensive stance.
A number of studies suggest a link between musical training and both specific and general cognitive abilities, but despite some positive results, there is disagreement about which abilities are ...improved. This study aims to investigate the effects of a music education program both on a domain-specific competence (meta-musical awareness), and on general domain competences, that is, cognitive abilities (logical-mathematical) and symbolic-linguistic abilities (notational). Twenty 4- to 6-year-old children participated in the research, divided into two groups (experimental and control) and the measures were administered at two different times, before and after a 6-month music program (for the experimental group) and after a sports training program (for the control group). Children performed meta-musical awareness tasks, logical-mathematical tasks, and emergent-alphabetization tasks. Non-parametric statistics show that a music program significantly improves the development of notational skills and meta-musical awareness while not the development of logical-mathematical skills. These results show that a musical program increases children’s meta-musical awareness, and their ability to acquire the notational ability involved in the invented writing of words and numbers. On the contrary, it does not affect the development of logical skills. The results are discussed in terms of transfer of knowledge processes and of specific versus general domain effects of a musical program.
The paper reports the results of two studies on the spelling performance of 1st graders in a transparent writing system. The spelling performance of Italian children was assessed to determine the ...cross-task relationship between spelling to dictation and spontaneous spelling at the single word level (Study 1) and at the text level (Study 2), respectively. In study 1, 132 Italian children's spelling performance was assessed in 1st grade through two standardized tasks, i.e., word dictation, and spontaneous word spelling. In study 2, spelling performance of 81 Italian children was assessed in 1st grade through two tasks, i.e., text dictation, and spontaneous text spelling. In Study 1, spelling words and pseudo-words to dictation was found to be more difficult than spontaneous spelling of words. This effect was verified for all children (including low achievers and spelling impaired). The moderate correlation found between spelling to dictation and spontaneous spelling indicated that the two tasks are supported by partially different spelling processes and confirmed suggestions for including both types of spelling assessments in the school. In Study 2, children's spelling performances were not dependent across the two tasks (i.e., spelling a text under dictation or spontaneously). The two tasks shared the level of difficulty but performance in one task was not predictive of performance in the second task. Strong individual differences between children were found at the text level as a function of task. Similar to Study 1, the moderate correlation between spelling text to dictation and spontaneous spelling confirmed the usefulness of adopting both spelling assessments at school.
This paper adopts sociomateriality as a theoretical lens to further our understanding of how imitation acts to support the use of objects, and in doing so, constitutes a sociomaterial practice. ...Within a sociomaterial perspective we aimed to perform the analysis of imitation as a powerful way to learn how to use objects embedded into the practices within which the objects are constituted. The contribution of this approach is illustrated using the findings of the application of the quasi-ecological
(
) methodology to the everyday lives of two 6-year-old children. Within a case-study frame, we traced the children's imitation behaviors focused on the use of objects during an entire day of their life, the various people and practices with which they were associated, the multiple sociomaterial configurations that the objects assume, and the social and material consequences of their use. Imitation appears to be is a complex activity, involving multiple stakeholders who interact in order to facilitate the understanding of various artifacts across diverse knowledge domains, and enhance their interpretive flexibility across communities of practice.
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