Childhood Learning Experiences Research Articles

The Complexities of the Mother’s Role in Providing Early Childhood Learning Experiences for Children with Developmental Delays

The mothers’ role in bringing up children with developmental delays seems to be challenging. Problems when they decide to access occupational therapy to help their children’s development have been revealed. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the common complexities that mothers experience while taking their children to occupational therapy as a rehabilitation program to deal with developmental delays. As well, it also describes mothers’ personal efforts in tackling those complexities. Five semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight mothers and Colaizzi’s method was used to analyze the data as proposed by the phenomenological approach. The results reveal that mothers experience complexities when their children are diagnosed as having developmental delays. These include sadness and shock, panic and confusion, and guilt. Other difficulties include time management, cost demands, and support systems related to the therapy process. In tackling those complexities, mothers need to build their capacity for self-efficacy and self-empowerment as well as try to accept their children’s condition and to change habits as recommended by therapists. Not only describing the phenomenon, this study also analyzed some developmental screening tests applied in different countries to come up with new models of preventive actions in Indonesia.

Standards and affordances of 21st-century digital learning: Using the Experience Application Programming Interface and the Augmented Reality Learning Experience Model to track engagement in extended reality

<p class="Abstract">The development of new extended reality (XR) technologies for learning enables the capture of a richer set of data than has previously been possible. To derive a benefit from this wealth of data requires new structures appropriate to the new learning activities these immersive learning tools afford. The Experience Application Programming Interface (xAPI) and the Augmented Reality Learning Experience Model (ARLEM) standards have been developed in response, and their adoption will help ensure interoperability as XR learning is more widely deployed. This paper briefly describes what is different about XR for learning and provides an account of xAPI and its structures as well as design principles for its use. The relationship between environmental context and ARLEM is explained, and a case study of a VR experience using xAPI is examined. The paper ends with an account of some of the promises for collecting data from early childhood learning experiences and an unsuccessful attempt at a study using Augmented Reality with young children.</p>

Disempowering emotions: The role of educational experiences in social responses to climate change

The process of learning about climate change is not simply cognitive. It is also an emotional encounter that may have enduring effects. To date, little research has attended to the emotional significance of childhood learning experiences of climate change in adult lives and in social responses to climate change. We report a qualitative study exploring the variety, complexity, and the post-school significance of affective experiences of climate change schooling. We interviewed 21 young adults (18–24 years) in Tasmania, Australia, with diverse educational backgrounds and diverse levels of interest in and opinions about climate change. Applying an interpretivist framework, we analysed the tangled and interrelated emotions evident in participant reflections on educational encounters with climate change. Three overarching themes were identified: 'stripped of power', 'stranded by the generation gap' and 'daunted by the future'. In contrast to discourses of education as empowering, a majority of participants (n = 16) told of feeling disempowered by their educational encounters with climate change. They described being overwhelmed by an experience of limited agency and power. Participants also identified a generational gap that left them feeling abandoned by older adults, with associated feelings of anger and betrayal. Finally, affective experience of climate change schooling had ongoing significance for participants as they sought to make life choices in the shadow of a frightening future. These findings provide insight into the interaction of facts and feelings in public engagements with climate change. A lack of integration of cognitive and affective experience in climate change schooling may have lasting effects in adult attitudes and behaviours, and related social dynamics of distrust and division, related to this issue. In this study, young adult participants recounted childhood experiences of being powerless, betrayed and afraid in learning about climate change as significant formative encounters in their ongoing understanding of climate change.

When Drawing Proliferates: Toward an Onto-Epistemological Pedagogy of Children’s Drawing

Abstract Children’s drawing is an important part of early childhood learning experiences. While young children seem to have little need for drawing instruction, classrooms where drawing features as a central component to curriculum provide material conditions that can sustain its practice. In this paper, I employ a new material heuristic to explore how drawing and the drawings children produce are implicated in the production of pedagogical matter. To do so, I invite readers to visit with a Reggio-inspired preschool classroom where, for the past 3 years, I have participated together with children and teachers in a research relationship focusing on young children’s learning and early childhood pedagogy.

Looking away: An analysis of early childhood teaching and learning experiences framed through a quality metric

In this article, the author examines the ways in which a classroom quality metric framed the teaching and learning experiences of teachers and children in three Head Start classrooms. Using comic subjectivity theory, the author critically analyzes the ways in which the high-stakes classroom quality measure used in Head Start settings directed her gaze as a researcher, and had implications for teachers’ practice and children’s learning within the site of this gaze. This analysis raises questions about expectations for teachers’ performativity, the role of researchers’ complicity, and how children’s learning is conceptualized in early childhood classrooms that are heavily accountable to outside forces. This article also considers what the costs may be for teachers and children in early childhood settings where quality is conceptualized in ways that stand in stark contrast to teachers’ professional and personal knowledge. In these sites, their knowledge of and engagement with children is made subject to measure-directed regimes in the current accountability-driven era.

Arabic, Grammar, and Teaching: An Islamic Historical Perspective

Motivated by the need to rethink Islamic education and Arabic teaching in Western Islamic schools (Ramadan 2004), this article seeks to present an analytical exploration of Islamic educational thought on the purpose of Arabic grammar and its place in Arabic language teaching. The article will review the rise of Arabic grammar and thought surrounding its instruction to understand whether one of the most prevalent approaches to teaching Muslim children Arabic as a foreign or second language today, the Grammar-Translation Method (GTM), is part of the Islamic educational tradition. The GTM, which is not suited to the promotion of childhood literacy or language acquisition and leaves many children disengaged and with stilted rudimentary literacy, is often conflated with the rich philological tradition of the Islamic civilization. However, was nahw [grammar] meant to be the core component of Muslim childhood learning experiences in the way that it is today, or has the GTM method supplanted Islamic civilizational thought on teaching language? This article seeks to answer this question and will do so by reviewing the purpose of the Arabic language in the Islamic civilization, the rise of Arabic grammar and thought surrounding education and Arabic instruction.

The Relationships among Sources of Teacher Pedagogical Beliefs, Teaching Experiences, and Student Outcomes

Teachers’ beliefs are derived from various sources such as experiences and personality (Kennedy, 1997; Donaghue, 2003; Ellis, 2008), childhood learning experiences (Rokeach, 1968), teaching experiences (Zeichner and Tabachnick, 1981), and folk pedagogy (Bruner, 1996). The relationship of these sources and learners’ outcomes are under question; therefore, this study investigated the relationships among sources of teacher pedagogical beliefs, teaching experiences, and student outcomes. The researchers classified these sources into two categories “ Experienced Pedagogical Beliefs ” and “ Educational Pedagogical Beliefs ”. To conduct this study, 150 Iranian ELT instructors had been chosen randomly. Their students’ scores were also used in data analysis. A beliefs’ questionnaire and interview were employed to elicit instructors’ sources of pedagogical beliefs. The results suggested that a significant proportion of the total variations in learners’ outcomes were predicted by teachers’ sources of pedagogical beliefs and teachers’ teaching experiences. The implications for improving the quality of teacher education programs were also discussed.

Visual motherese? Signal-to-noise ratios in toddler-directed television.

Younger brains are noisier information processing systems; this means that information for younger individuals has to allow clearer differentiation between those aspects that are required for the processing task in hand (the ‘signal’) and those that are not (the ‘noise’). We compared toddler-directed and adult-directed TV programmes (TotTV/ATV). We examined how low-level visual features (that previous research has suggested influence gaze allocation) relate to semantic information, namely the location of the character speaking in each frame. We show that this relationship differs between TotTV and ATV. First, we conducted Receiver Operator Characteristics analyses and found that feature congestion predicted speaking character location in TotTV but not ATV. Second, we used multiple analytical strategies to show that luminance differentials (flicker) predict face location more strongly in TotTV than ATV. Our results suggest that TotTV designers have intuited techniques for controlling toddler attention using low-level visual cues. The implications of these findings for structuring childhood learning experiences away from a screen are discussed.

Anxiety Sensitivity and Childhood Learning Experiences: Impacts on Panic Symptoms Among Adolescents

Specific parenting behaviors, in the context of offspring bodily arousal, relate to elevated risk for panic symptomatology. Research with adults also suggests anxiety sensitivity (AS) plays an important role in this relationship. However, very limited research has been conducted with adolescents. To address this gap in the literature, the current study evaluated the interplay between AS and arousal-reactive as well as arousal non-reactive childhood learning experiences in predicting panic symptomatology among a community sample of 10–17 year old adolescents (n = 153). Findings indicated arousal-reactive learning experiences were associated with increased panic symptomatology, but only among youth high in AS. Further, this model evidenced relative specificity in that arousal non-reactive learning experiences did not interact with AS to predict panic symptomatology. The current findings add to the literature seeking to elucidate the interplay between specific parenting behaviors and offspring characteristics as they relate to elevated risk for panic-related outcomes.

Specificity of Childhood Learning Experiences in Relation to Anxiety Sensitivity and Illness/Injury Sensitivity: Implications for Health Anxiety and Pain

Health anxiety refers to the preoccupation with and fear of bodily sensations arising from catastrophic misinterpretations about the significance of these sensations (Hadjistavropoulos, Asmundson, & Kowalyk, 2004). Constructs theoretically relevant to the development of both health anxiety and chronic pain are two of the putative “fundamental fears” identified by Reiss (1991)—anxiety sensitivity (AS) and illness/injury sensitivity (IS) (Cox, Borger, & Enns, 1999; Vancleef, Peters, Roelofs, & Asmundson, 2006). The learning history origins of AS have been examined in a series of studies (Stewart et al., 2001; Watt & Stewart, 2000; Watt, Stewart, & Cox, 1998); however, no studies have examined the learning history antecedents of IS. The present retrospective study compared the relative specificity of learning experiences related to the development of AS and IS in a sample of 192 undergraduates (143 women and 49 men). Structural equation modeling supported nonspecific paths from both anxiety-related and aches/pains-related childhood learning experiences to AS and a more specific path from aches/pain-related childhood learning experiences to IS. Results suggest that the developmental antecedents of IS are more specific to learning experiences around aches and pains, whereas the developmental origins of AS are more broadly related to learning experiences around bodily sensations.

The Role of Anxiety Sensitivity Components in Mediating the Relationship Between Childhood Exposure to Parental Dyscontrol and Adult Anxiety Symptoms

This retrospective study investigated the relationship between childhood exposure to parental dyscontrol (i.e., loss of control behaviors) and levels of anxiety sensitivity (AS) components in early adulthood. Four-hundred-and-sixty-five undergraduate students completed self-report measures including the Dyscontrol Experiences Questionnaire. Specificity emerged between AS components and particular dyscontrol experiences. Although exposure to parental dyscontrol related to negative emotional states was significantly positively correlated with all AS dimensions, exposure to parental dyscontrol related to drinking was significantly positively correlated with psychological concerns only. Mediator regression analyses showed AS psychological concerns to play a significant mediating role between parental dyscontrol related to anger and drinking and both general and panic-related anxiety symptoms in the adult offspring. Results suggest that specific parental behaviors may be etiologic in the development of AS, and acquired AS may help explain relations between childhood learning experiences and the development of psychopathological symptoms in young adulthood.

Causal modeling of relations among learning history, anxiety sensitivity, and panic attacks

We used structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypothesis that childhood instrumental and vicarious learning experiences influence frequency of panic attacks in young adulthood both directly, and indirectly through their effects on anxiety sensitivity (AS). A total of 478 university students participated in a retrospective assessment of their childhood learning experiences for arousal–reactive sensations (e.g., nausea, racing heart, shortness of breath, dizziness) and arousal–non-reactive sensations (i.e., colds, aches and pains, and rashes). SEM revealed that learning history for arousal–reactive somatic symptoms directly influenced both AS levels and panic frequency; AS directly influenced panic frequency; and learning history for arousal–non-reactive symptoms directly influenced AS but did not directly influence panic frequency. These results are consistent with the findings of previous retrospective studies on the learning history origins of AS and panic attacks, and provide the first empirical evidence of a partial mediation effect of AS in explaining the relation between childhood learning experiences and panic attacks in young adulthood. Implications for understanding the etiology of panic disorder are discussed.

Anxiety sensitivity mediates the relationships between childhood learning experiences and elevated hypochondriacal concerns in young adulthood

Objective: the present study investigated childhood learning experiences potentially associated with the development of elevated hypochondriacal concerns in a non-clinical young adult sample, and examined the possible mediating roles of anxiety sensitivity (i.e., fear of anxiety-related symptoms) and trait anxiety (i.e., frequency of anxiety symptoms) in explaining these relationships. Method: 197 university students participated in a retrospective assessment of their childhood instrumental (i.e., parental reinforcement) and vicarious (i.e., parental modeling) learning experiences with respect to arousal–reactive (e.g., dizziness) and arousal–non-reactive (e.g., lumps) bodily symptoms, respectively. Childhood learning experiences were assessed using a revised version of the Learning History Questionnaire (LHQ), anxiety sensitivity levels with the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), trait anxiety levels with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait (STAI-T) scale, and degree of hypochondriacal concerns with the Illness Attitudes Scale (IAS)-Total score. Results: consistent with earlier findings [Watt MC, Stewart SH, Cox BJ. A retrospective study of the learning history origins of anxiety sensitivity. Behav Res Ther 1998; 36: 505–525.], elevated anxiety sensitivity levels were associated with increased instrumental and vicarious learning experiences related to both arousal–reactive and arousal–non-reactive bodily symptoms. Similarly, individuals with elevated hypochondriacal concerns also reported both more instrumental and vicarious learning experiences around bodily symptoms than did students with lower levels of such concerns. However, contrary to the hypothesis, the childhood learning experiences related to hypochondriacal concerns were not specific to arousal–non-reactive symptoms, but instead involved parental reinforcement and modeling of bodily symptoms in general (arousal–reactive and –non-reactive symptoms alike). Anxiety sensitivity, but not trait anxiety, partially mediated the relationships between childhood learning experiences and elevated hypochondriacal concerns in young adulthood. Conclusions: elevated anxiety sensitivity appears to be a risk factor for the development of hypochondriasis when learning experiences have involved both arousal–reactive and arousal–non-reactive bodily symptoms.

A retrospective study of the learning history origins of anxiety sensitivity

Anxiety sensitivity (AS; the fear of anxiety-related sensations) has been proposed as a risk factor for the development of panic disorder. The present study involved a conceptual replication of Ehlers' (1993, Behaviour Research and Therapy, 31, 269–278) study on childhood learning experiences and panic attacks, but also extended her work by investigating the relationship between early learning experiences and the development of AS, in a non-clinical sample. A sample of 551 university students participated in a retrospective assessment of their childhood and adolescent instrumental and vicarious learning experiences with respect to somatic symptoms (i.e. anxiety and cold symptoms, respectively) using an expanded version of Ehler's (1993) Learning History Questionnaire. AS levels were assessed using the Anxiety Sensitivity Index, and panic history was obtained using the Panic Attack Questionnaire, Revised. Contrary to hypotheses, the learning experiences of high AS individuals were not found to be specific to anxiety symptoms, but involved parental reinforcement of sick-role behavior related to somatic symptoms in general. High AS subjects reported both more anxiety and cold symptoms prior to age 18 than individuals with lower levels of AS. In addition, both cold and anxiety symptoms elicited more special attention and/or instructions from parents for high AS individuals to take special care of themselves. These findings are contrasted with the results for self-reported panickers who reported more learning experiences (modeling and parental reinforcement) specific to anxiety-related symptoms, than the non-panickers. The results suggest that higher-than-normal levels of AS may arise from learning to catastrophize about the occurrence of bodily symptoms in general, rather than anxiety-related symptoms in particular.

Somatic symptoms and panic attacks: A retrospective study of learning experiences

Individuals with panic attacks evaluate physical anxiety symptoms as dangerous and tend to respond to them with fear. In a retrospective questionnaire study, we explored childhood and adolescent learning experiences with respect to somatic symptoms of panickers. Compared to normal controls ( N = 61), patients with panic disorder ( N = 121), infrequent panickers ( N = 86) and patients with other anxiety disorders ( N = 38) reported more frequent instances prior to age 18 when they had experienced symptoms like dizziness, shortness of breath, palpitations or nausea, accompanied by special attention from their parents and instructions to restrain from strenuous or social activities. The differences were due to higher symptom frequencies in the anxiety groups. All anxiety groups reported more frequent uncontrolled behavior of their parents than controls. Patients with panic disorder and infrequent panickers reported that their parents had suffered more frequently from physical symptoms typical of anxiety than patients with other anxiety disorders or normal controls. Panickers, but not patients with other anxiety disorders, had observed sick-role behavior related to panic symptoms in their parents more often than controls. Panic attack Ss reported a higher number of household members suffering from chronic illnesses than controls and patients with other anxiety disorders. No group differences were found in the reported behavior of parents when Ss had colds. Overall, the results point to the role of severe illnesses and physical symptoms typical of anxiety in significant others in the history of Ss with panic attacks. These experiences during childhood and adolescence may contribute to their belief that physical symptoms are dangerous. In contrast, there was no specificity for panic with respect to the Ss' own physical symptoms or cold-related symptoms.