Children Construct Research Articles

Melodic Construction in Children's Songs "Toyor Al-Janna Channel as a Model"

This study aims to identify the melodic construction of a child's song from a specialist standpoint, as well as the characteristics of the melodic style used in these songs. The research population consists of a selection of songs from Toyor Al-Janna channel، which included (22) songs selected randomly.The researchers relied on the descriptive analytical method to prepare this study, and attempted to scientifically analyze songs in an attempt to discover the melodic building there in. The study concluded a set of results: the structure of the melodic sentences of children's songs is formulated with a mechanism that tends to rely on familiar musical scales and a simple music distribution, with melodic styles familiar to the child, which begin with a musical introduction with modern electronic instruments, and with active and simple rhythms. Most of the passages tune is concentrated in an up-and-down tonal sequence and in simple melodic jumps، repeating the tune within the child's sound space. It was clear that melodies of this age category missed the harmonic tunes for not fitting into the age category of children. The study concluded with a number of recommendations the most important of which are: the necessity of diversification of the rhythms and genres accompanying children's songs to avoid monotony and repetition, and to focus on variations in melody in the song while maintaining simplicity so that the child can perform it.

Action Research on Promoting Spatial Skills Development of Older Children in Block Play

Spatial skills are an important part of human intelligence and have a profound impact on children's later learning and development of mathematics, and block play, as one of the most fundamental activities in kindergarten, has a positive effect on the development of children's spatial skills. In order to improve children's spatial skills through block play, this study used an action research paradigm to intervene with 30 children in the experimental and control classes over a period of three months. In quantitative terms, the spatial skills of the children in the experimental class showed significant improvements in comparison with those in the control class. In terms of quality, the children in the experimental class used significantly more spatial language in their block play and their level of construction improved significantly. Problem solving skills were developed and interest in constructing was increased during collaborative construction. Teachers who participated in the action research were less 'resistant' to the role of the teacher in block play, and their ability to use block play as a guide for children's spatial skills development was improved. The collaboration of the research team members was a key factor in the success of the action research. Teachers should use different types of block play to improve children's construction skills. Promote peer block building to bring out the unique value of peer construction. Focus on the role of spatial language and encourage children to use it to communicate.

The Construction of Children's Psychology through Picture Book Narratives-Focused on Chi Dao de Li You and Chi Dao Da Wang

Being late for school is one of the common problems children face in their daily lives. It can trigger anxiety and tension in children, which can have a negative impact on their mental health. Reading picture books can help children understand and express their emotions, which has positive significance for children’s psychological relief. In order to explore the picture book narrative’s understanding and attention to children's psychology, this paper focuses on two picture books with the theme of tardiness, Chi Dao de Li You (The Reasons for Being Late) and Chi Dao Da Wang (King of Lateness), and analyzes their characteristics in three aspects, namely, the selection of characters, image narrative art, and connotation expression, starting from the narrative characteristics of picture books. Research shows that picture books combine real life with fantasy to build a unique psychological world for children, and their restoration and understanding of children's psychological conditions alleviate their anxiety in facing stressful situations and establish correct problem-solving concepts. At the same time, parent-child reading can help adults better understand children's psychology and correctly guide children's behavior, which helps improve children's positive emotional development and maintain a good parent-child relationship.

Parents’ Levels of Involvement and Role Construction in Children’s Reading at Home

Using a descriptive research methodology, this study determined parents’ levels of involvement and role construction regarding involvement in children’s reading at home. This study surveyed 379 parents of Grade 4 pupils from the Schools Division of Ilocos Norte for school year 2019-2020. The Assessment Tool on Parents’ Levels of Involvement in Children’s Reading at Home and Levels of Role Construction Regarding Involvement in Children’s Reading at Home was used to gather data. Mean was used to describe their responses to the survey-questionnaire with respect to modeling, cognitive and behavioral dimensions of parental involvement; and their levels of role construction regarding involvement in children’s reading at home. Majority of the parents had low levels of involvement in the modeling, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions; their level of role construction was high.

Children's and adolescents’ conversations with mothers about offenders’ and victims’ responsibility for harm in their experiences of being hurt by a peer

AbstractThis study investigated mothers’ and children's constructions of meaning about responsibility for harm in conversations about two experiences when children were hurt by a peer and felt they had either contributed or not contributed to the situation. The sample included 105 Canadian mothers (75% White) and their children (53 girls, 52 boys) across three age groups (M ages = 6.92, 11.14, 15.89 years). Overall, mothers and children emphasized different aspects of responsibility; mothers made more evaluations of acts and discussed the avoidability of harm whereas children referred more to hurtful acts, consequences, reasons, and subsequent responses. Discussions of the child's and peer's responsibility were responsive to the child's perspective on events. The child's responsibility for self‐protection was particularly emphasized by mothers and when the child felt they had not contributed to the situation. Children more often mitigated their responsibility as compared to their mothers, and older children referred more to their own and their peer's responsibility for harm. Findings illuminate how conversations with mothers may inform children's judgments of their own and others’ roles in peer conflict.

Children's Construction of their own Happiness and Wellbeing as Agents of Socialization

Children's Construction of their own Happiness and Wellbeing as Agents of Socialization

A Reliability Generalization Meta-Analysis of 17 Patient-Reported Outcome Measures for Positive Psychosocial Constructs in Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults with Cancer.

Introduction: Children, adolescents, and young adults (AYAs) with cancer are a special population who are subjected to a number of unique challenges, stressors, and barriers to high-quality psychological care. In a recent systematic review of measurement properties, we found that 5 of 18 identified patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) had sufficient psychometric properties to justify their use. A next step is to analyze the reliability of these scale scores in a reliability-generalization meta-analysis. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of three databases for all studies reporting reliability data for previously identified PROMs. Included studies were further required to include patients with cancer, or survivors of cancer, ages 2-39. We next synthesized alpha and test-retest coefficients using best statistical practices, according to prespecified subgroups, where possible. We considered a threshold of 0.7 to represent sufficient evidence of reliability. Results: Seventy-one studies were included. Overall, reliability coefficients for scale and subscale scores exceeded 0.7. Subgroup analyses were limited by incomplete reporting and a lack of sufficient studies for each subgroup; however, where conducted, these subgroup analyses showed significant differences in the reliability of self-reports versus proxy reports and original versus adapted versions of PROMs. Discussion: We recommend better reporting of reliability data in future studies of children and AYAs with cancer. We discourage relying on historical reliability data in different samples and the reporting of only ranges of reliability coefficients for subscales. Our study suggests that significant differences in the reliability of PROMs may be associated with the PROM respondent and the version of the PROM, thus highlighting the need for further investigation.

Hand preference in referential gestures: Relationships to accessing words for speaking in monolingual and bilingual children.

IntroductionInfants’ right‐hand preference for pointing is associated with higher vocabulary. It is not clear whether the link between right‐hand preference for gesturing and language persists into the preschool years. The primary purpose of the present study was to test whether preschool children's hand preference for referential gestures was associated with their language abilities. Secondarily, we predicted that the children's right‐hand preference would be negatively associated with their visuospatial abilities. We also predicted that monolingual children would show a strong right‐hand preference while bilinguals might show a reduced right‐hand preference.MethodsMonolingual and bilingual children between the ages of four and six years did a storytelling task. Their referential gestures were coded for hand use (right, left, both). We measured language skills (receptive vocabulary, semantic fluency).ResultsWe found no difference between bilinguals and monolinguals on hand preference. Semantic fluency was a positive predictor and vocabulary a negative predictor of right‐hand preference. Children's visuospatial abilities were not a predictor of right‐hand preference.ConclusionThese results suggest that right‐hand preference may help children select semantically appropriate words out of their existing vocabulary. In other words, this preference may be related to children's construction of the message that they would like to produce. The association between hand preference and language skills persists into the preschool years.

Evaluation of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures of Positive Psychosocial Constructs in Children and Adolescent/Young Adults with Cancer: A Systematic Review of Measurement Properties.

Introduction: Children, adolescents, and young adults with cancer are a vulnerable population in whom improvements in psycho-oncology care would be valuable. We previously published a scoping review exploring what is known about positive psychological constructs in this population. A key finding was that evidence-based patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) were needed to standardize psycho-oncology research. Methods: We undertook a systematic review of measurement properties focused on PROMs in the pediatric and adolescent/young adults (AYAs) with cancer populations. We searched for PROMs that measured at least 1 of 15 previously identified, key positive constructs. This systematic review followed COSMIN guidelines, considered the gold standard manual for systematic reviews of measurement properties. Results: We identified 20 (22 if proxy reports are counted separately) unique PROMs that met inclusion criteria. Of those, only five were recommended for use given the current evidence. The remainder may be used if no alternative exists. Only eight PROMs had any evidence of content validity, considered the most important psychometric property by COSMIN. Many studies were at risk of bias owing to incomplete or suboptimal methods. Discussion: Five PROMs are considered reliable for the pediatric and AYA with cancer populations. A number of PROMs require additional research to ensure their items and instructions are comprehensive, relevant, and comprehensible to children and AYAs. Given the overall lack of research, this review may be considered a starting point for the future refinement of a core set of PROMs to measure positive psychological constructs.

“This is a different kingdom”: A case study of gender-creative feminine expression during princess play

Many children, but predominantly young girls, gravitate towards princess play. In response to previous academic findings suggesting that princess play is always detrimental to young children's developing perspectives of femininity, this qualitative study explores the potential for gender-creativity during this roleplaying game. In an effort to refute the pre-existing literature, the current case study asks the following question: To what extent does princess play offer creative or confining possibilities for childhood feminine expression? While much of the literature in early childhood education (ECE) indicates that Disney is the sole inspiration for every child's construction of this imagination game, the findings in this article indicate that Disney is one influence among many for focal participants. Using open coding to analyze data generated during play-based interviews with two cisgender girls, this article demonstrates that the creative possibilities of princess play remain underrepresented in research. Although princess play offers only partial potential for non-stereotypical feminine expression, gender normativity can be actively challenged, especially when adults support and encourage unconventional formats of princess play during early childhood.

Definitions and Operationalization of Mental Health Problems, Wellbeing and Participation Constructs in Children with NDD: Distinctions and Clarifications.

Children with impairments are known to experience more restricted participation than other children. It also appears that low levels of participation are related to a higher prevalence of mental health problems in children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD). The purpose of this conceptual paper is to describe and define the constructs mental health problems, mental health, and participation to ensure that future research investigating participation as a means to mental health in children and adolescents with NDD is founded on conceptual clarity. We first discuss the difference between two aspects of mental health problems, namely mental disorder and mental illness. This discussion serves to highlight three areas of conceptual difficulty and their consequences for understanding the mental health of children with NDD that we then consider in the article: (1) how to define mental health problems, (2) how to define and assess mental health problems and mental health, i.e., wellbeing as separate constructs, and (3) how to describe the relationship between participation and wellbeing. We then discuss the implications of our propositions for measurement and the use of participation interventions as a means to enhance mental health (defined as wellbeing). Conclusions: Mental disorders include both diagnoses related to impairments in the developmental period, i.e., NDD and diagnoses related to mental illness. These two types of mental disorders must be separated. Children with NDD, just like other people, may exhibit aspects of both mental health problems and wellbeing simultaneously. Measures of wellbeing defined as a continuum from flourishing to languishing for children with NDD need to be designed and evaluated. Wellbeing can lead to further participation and act to protect from mental health problems.

Supervisees’ professional development and the analytic community

Children construct their inner worlds by internalizing real and imagined aspects of their parental figures and their families as whole objects with their relational configurations. These familial configurations are often evoked in the context of communities that, similarly to families, struggle to preserve and advance their unity and collective values, interests, and symbols. Supervisees acknowledge their internalized familial relational configurations when they explore their countertransferences and their transferential responses to the analytic community. Understanding these transferences in supervision may facilitate the process of assimilating the analytic community into supervisees’ professional selves. Moreover, the supervisors represent and mediate both the community’s balanced and flexible relational therapeutic positions and its complexities. These positions might provide the supervisees with new group-object experiences and change their defensively organized rigid familial relational configurations, thereby further integrating the supervisees’ professional selves as well as strengthening the analytic community.

Children and structured holiday camping: Processes and perceived outcomes

Holiday camping and time spent in outdoor environments are critical childhood experiences. This study aims to identify the outcomes and processes underlying children's experiences of holiday camping. The researchers use the contextual model of learning as the theoretical background underpinning the study. Chinese children who left their families and participated in structured camping trips formed as the research respondents. Several child-centred research methods, including participant observation, focus group discussions, and interviews based on elicited drawings, were employed to study the children's construction of their experiences. Children mainly reported positive camping outcomes, including enhanced interpersonal skills, improved self-awareness, general knowledge and skills, and positive emotions. Negative outcomes including feelings of anxiety and boredom were also occasionally observed. The ongoing interplay of personal, social, and physical contexts works together to generate these camping outcomes. Practical and theoretical implications are offered to enhance positive outcomes and reduce negative ones when children go camping.

The development of 3- to 6-year-olds’ symbolic representation ability in a block construction activity

ABSTRACT Symbolic representation refers to the use of physical or psychological processes to represent an object in a symbolic form. The present study investigated the development of children’s symbolic representation using a new measure of children's block constructions. Ninety children (44 girls) in three age groups (3-4, 4-5, and 5-6 years) were randomly assigned to reproduce an example of ancient Chinese architecture using either two-dimensional pictures or a three-dimensional scale model. Children in the 3-4 age group produced significantly better constructions in the pictures condition. This picture-superiority effect disappeared in the 4-5 age group. In the 5-6 age group, there was better dimensionality in children's constructions when they used a scale model as the referent. The data identified the age of 4-5 as a critical period for the development of children's symbolic representation to transfer relational information from a scale model to their construction.

Supplemental Material for Parental Ethnic–Racial Socialization Practices and the Construction of Children of Color’s Ethnic–Racial Identity: A Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis

Supplemental Material for Parental Ethnic–Racial Socialization Practices and the Construction of Children of Color’s Ethnic–Racial Identity: A Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis

THE MOTHER-CHILD ATTACHMENT PARTNERSHIP IN EARLY CHILDHOOD: SECURE BASE BEHAVIORAL AND REPRESENTATIONAL PROCESSES.

The chapters in this monograph describe the transition of attachment representations from a predominantly sensorimotor, in the moment, experience for the infant/toddler to internalized, mental representations of attachment that are transportable to new social contexts, in which attachment figures may not be present. The chapters focus on means that parents use to help their child effect this transition in terms of both behavioral support for the child's secure base behavior and for cognitive skills that underlie the child's construction of mental models of attachment. The results cohere across studies and make a compelling case for Bowlby's notion that internal models of how attachment "works" are co-constructed through social processes during early childhood. Taken together, the results reported here constitute a milestone achievement for the attachment enterprise in terms of their theoretical and methodological rigor. These findings also justify Bowlby's confidence that cognitive psychology would become a critical disciplinary ally of attachment theory.

Parents in the playground, headscarves in the school and an inspector taken hostage: exercising agency and challenging dominant deficit discourses in a multilingual pre-school in France

ABSTRACTIn France, dominant monolingual discourses and teachers’ lack of knowledge about bilingualism and second language acquisition often result in ‘French only’ policies in classrooms including in pre-school classrooms where some emergent bilingual children speak a language other than the language of schooling and very little or no French. These policies can be detrimental to emergent bilingual children's language development, identity construction and overall long-term academic success. However, teachers in multilingual classrooms also have the power to exercise their agency to support children's bilingual language development and to implement practices which empower them and their families. This paper focuses on the ways in which one pre-school teacher working with three and four year old emergent bilingual children asserted her agency in the classroom despite institutional constraints. It investigates the beliefs, experiences, aspirations and knowledge which underpinned her sense of agency, the ways in which her actions empowered the children and parents and discusses the implications of the study for initial teacher education and continuous professional development.

Young Children's Language uses during Play and Implications for Classroom Assessment

THIS PAPER REPORTS ON research examining children's use of language in dramatic play and play with construction materials in kindergarten classrooms within three Indigenous and two non-Indigenous northern Canadian rural communities. Underpinned by sociolinguistic theory, the research involves inductive analysis of video-recorded interactions of five-year-old children during play. Participating children used language for 36 different purposes. Children's construction play talk often involved purposes within the categories of Language for learning and Language for own needs. Children often used language for purposes associated with the Language for learning and Language for imagining categories in dramatic play. As part of collaborative action research, teachers and researchers used these findings to develop a formative oral language observation tool. Using the tool, information gathered can inform practice and communication with parents and speech-language pathologists working with identified children.

Newspaper and Teacher Constructions of Children of Migrant Parents in Rural China

Newspaper and Teacher Constructions of Children of Migrant Parents in Rural China

Lego-like technologies in manufacturing power distribution boxes for contemporary radar station

The paper considers ways of increasing labour productivity in manufacturing radioelectronic system components. We used systems engineering methods to develop a new approach to describing manufacturing processes that makes it possible to reduce assembly duration. We present a promising technology for describing a manufacturing process in small-lot production using digital 3D modelling and a Lego -like approach to design building instructions for children's construction sets.