Childhood Classrooms Research Articles

Children in classrooms: peer status, status distribution and mental well-being

This study focuses on social relations in school classes and their importance for mental well-being in middle childhood in a Scottish city. The aspect of social relations under study is peer status and both the individual's own status position and the status distribution of the school class as a whole was considered. The number of children analysed was 13,932 and the number of school classes 524. The results show a clear association at individual level: the higher the status position the more uncommon is malaise. This is true both when malaise is reported by the teacher and by a parent, for both boys and girls and irrespective of the number of friends. The association was also generally present within school. It exists regardless of grade, type of school and class size. Furthermore, a minority of the classes had a more compressed status distribution and here malaise was less common in all status positions. This was especially the case when the school class did not contain marginalized children. Consequently, that some children are marginalized in the group indicates problematic conditions for the persons in question but also for the other group members.

Rethinking Field Experience

Three types of data were gathered on a partnership and a single-placement model of early field experience. Data came from mentor and preservice teacher interviews, preservice teacher time logs, and transcripts of planning sessions. Although all mentors and preservice teachers found value in their experience, data indicate that those who participated in partnership placements had a very different experience. Preservice teachers in partner-placements felt better supported and were able to engage in greater instructional risks within the classroom. Children in classrooms where partners were placed were reportedly better served. Mentors in partnership placements were more flexible in planning with preservice teachers and appeared to be more trusting. The authors conclude that partnership placement holds promise for providing richer, more interesting, and more educative early field experience for elementary preservice teachers than traditional practice allows.

Using technology to help preservice teachers construct knowledge about young children's classroom environments

In an effort to help teacher candidates understand early childhood classroom environments, a website was constructed for use in a foundation in early childhood education course. This website, based on constructivist teaching practices uses technology in a unique way to assist students as they come to know, understand, and use the principles associated with room arrangement and management of early childhood classrooms.

The social conflict inventory (SCI): A measure of beliefs about classroom peer conflicts

This study describes the development of the Social Conflict Inventory (SCI), a self‐report teacher belief scale for assessing beliefs about young children's classroom peer conflicts. Three phases were involved in the construction of the SCI: item development, initial testing with one sample (n = 218), and follow‐up field test with a second sample (n = 395) that also addressed the convergent and concurrent validity of the instrument. Reliability and factor analyses conducted during the initial field test resulted in a reduction to 20 items (Cronbach’ s α = .87) with three subscales: General Orientation to Peer Conflict (α = .81), Cessation (α = .84), and Facilitation (α = .65). Similar patterns of factor loadings and reliabilities resulted from analyses of the follow‐up field test data. Overall, the SCI proved to be a reliable instrument for assessing the beliefs concerning the role of classroom conflicts in children's development and for differentiating among groups of teachers. Further use of the SCI in conjunction with other measures of teacher beliefs will contribute to a better understanding of its concurrent validity. Finally, the potential for its use in future studies to clarify the relationship between beliefs and actual classroom practices and as an instrument for assessing the effectiveness of specific classroom management training programs is discussed.

A Study of the Relationship between Child Care Providers' Use of HIV/AIDS Information Sources, Knowledge of HIV/AIDS, and Attitudes toward Caregiving Policies.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that leads to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), has been a part of American society for over two decades. Today, HIV/AIDS touches all demographic groups, including young children. It is for this reason that child care providers need to be informed about HIV/AIDS and related policies that impact their work with young children. The purpose of this study was to examine child care providers' use of different HIV/AIDS information sources in relationship to their knowledge about HIV/AIDS and their response to common childhood behaviors and classroom situations involving an HIV-infected child. Results suggest that different types of information sources are associated with different aspects of providers' knowledge about and response to pediatric HIV/AIDS. Implications for the planning and delivery of HIV/AID training involving child care providers are discussed.

Documentation

Rendi, the speech/language therapist at the Green River Child Development Center, routinely observed her preschool children in their classroom settings. She recorded the data from these observations in her "little blue book." When it was time to review a child's progress toward IEP goals, Rendi referred to the little blue book for evidence. When Rendi learned about the Reggio Emilia approach to documentation of children's learning, she decided to "free the data from the little blue book" and make it visible on documentation panels hung in the children's classrooms. Soon the children, their parents, and their teachers supplemented the usual assessment procedures in new ways that made growth and development more visible.

Early development of self-injurious behavior: an empirical study.

The early development of SIB in young children with developmental disabilities was examined by tracking over an 18-month period 16 school-age children who had recently started to show early SIB. Naturalistic observations were conducted in each child's classroom every 3 months, and the association between early SIB and environmental events was examined. Results showed that for the 4 children whose early SIB had escalated over this period, there was a significant association between early SIB and low levels of social contact across observation points, supporting models of the development of SIB. This association might be considered as a risk marker for the exacerbation of SIB. Implications of this finding for targeting early interventions for SIB are discussed.

Ethnic Majority/Minority Status: Children's Interactions and Affective Responses to Music

This study is an examination of the effect of classroom ethnic majority/minority status on third-, fifth-, and seventh-grade children's ( N = 118) interactions and affective responses while these children listened to and discussed a Latin salsa artist, an African-American rhythm and blues artist, and a European-American folk artist. Classroom ethnic-group proportions determined African-American and European-American children's classroom status. The study also examined the children's preference ratings for each artist. The researcher recorded the children's interactions on a laptop computer while they listened to and discussed the performers. The findings suggested that classroom status affected girls' interactions more than boys'. The study reports statistically significant differences among the children's music preferences.

Increasing Early Social-Communicative Skills of Preverbal Preschool Children with Autism through Social Interactive Training

We evaluated the effects of a social interactive training program on early social-communicative skills (i.e., eye contact, joint attention, motor imitation) of three preverbal preschool children with autism. Training was conducted in the children's classroom during naturally occurring daily activities. Findings indicated that implementation of social interactive training components (i.e., contingent imitation, use of naturally occurring reinforcement, expectant look, environmental arrangement) was associated with increases in target behaviors across participants. In addition, generalization of eye contact and motor imitation behavior were found across an additional setting and different interactive partners, although joint attention rarely generalized. Social validation measures provided by 30 raters indicated that perceived positive changes in performance had occurred in child behaviors and that training procedures were considered acceptable. Results are discussed in terms of implications for research and practice.

Children's Perspectives on the Roles of Teachers and Therapists in Inclusive Early Childhood Programs

In the United States, slightly more than half of young children with disabilities are enrolled in community-based early education programs with their typically developing peers. When this occurs, individualized intervention programs are often provided in the child's classroom with other children present. This study examined typically developing children's different ideas about the roles of the teachers, interventionists and therapists in inclusive early childhood programs. While most children knew their teachers by name, they were less likely to know the names of some of the therapists. Children described teachers' primary roles as teaching and taking care of children, while therapists were most often described as providing special services for a few children. Differences in children's descriptions of the adults' roles were related to the ways in which interventions were provided in the classroom. Implications of these findings for including children with disabilities in early childhood programs are discussed.

Parent Tutoring in Reading Using Literature and Curriculum Materials: Impact on Student Reading Achievement

This study investigated the effects of two parent tutoring reading programs upon children's reading achievement: one that used children's literature books and one that used each child's classroom basal reading materials. Subjects were 36 student/parent pairs assigned randomly to two treatment groups and a control group. The 15-week study comprised 5 weeks of baseline, 5 weeks of treatment, and 5 weeks of follow-up. During treatment, tutoring occurred four times each week for 20 minutes per session. Treatment effects were evaluated using curriculum-based measurement. Results showed that although parents implemented the tutoring programs as designed, neither tutoring program had a significant effect upon student reading achievement. Some individual students in LB and CB groups did experience gains in reading achievement, however. Implications for future endeavors in parent tutoring in reading are discussed.

Preschoolers' Classroom Activities and Interactions with Peers and Teachers

The present study was designed to investigate whether or not preschool children's classroom activities and interactions vary according to the power structure of their relationships. We examined the frequencies of children's play and problem-solving activities, and management, collaboration, and assistance interactions in these activities as a function of children's relationships with their teachers and peers. We had two expectations: 1) Preschool children would engage in problem-solving activities with their teachers, who are inherently more powerful; but they would engage in play activities with their peers with whom they share power. 2) Teacher–child interactions would involve primarily management and assistance but child-peer interactions would involve collaborations. We observed 55 children during their free-activity, noting partners, and narrating the actions and utterances of all the participants in writing during the observations. Our analyses were based on the coding of narratives, and they revealed that the power structure of children's relationships plays a role in their activities and interactions. We found that children's problem-solving occurred with both teachers and peers. Play activities occurred overwhelmingly with peers. Management and assistance took place mostly in teacher–child interaction, but collaboration occurred primarily with peers. These findings support the developmental theory that adults and peers contribute to children's development and education through different kinds of activities and interactions.

Rule compliance and peer sociability: a study of family process, school-focused parent-child interactions, and children's classroom behavior.

This study examined the associations among family processes (cohesion, control, and conflict), school-focused parent-child interactions (support and pressure about achievement), and the child's own characteristics (assertiveness, frustration tolerance, intellectual effectiveness, and self-esteem) as correlates of rule compliance and peer sociability in the classroom. The sample consisted of 161 Grade 4 and 151 Grade 7 children. Family processes and parent-child interactions about school issues were associated with children's personal characteristics, which, in turn, predicted children's rule compliance and peer sociability. Some differences were found between the 4th- and 7th-grade samples; however, many variables consistently predicted the same outcomes across grades.

Rule compliance and peer sociability: A study of family process, school-focused parent–child interactions, and children's classroom behavior.

Rule compliance and peer sociability: A study of family process, school-focused parent–child interactions, and children's classroom behavior.

Generalization programming and behavioral consultation.

Generalization Programming and Behavioral Consultation Behavioral consultation is a frequently used method for providing services to special education children within the school system (Gutkin & Curtis, 1999). One of the justifications for using consultation as a service delivery model in schools is its potential to be preventative; consultation aids a teacher in effective problem-solving and teaches specific behavioral skills to solve classroom problems. Many researchers have suggested that one of the most promising elements of consultation is that these skills, once learned, can be applied by the teacher to other children (Kratochwill, Elliott & Rotto, 1995). Meyers (1985) highlighted this concept by stating, ... consultation is viewed as a technique with the potential for influencing the behavior of the target child, other children in the child's classroom, and similar children which the teacher may work with in the future (p. This potential benefit is directly in line with Caplan's original concept that consultation can multiply the effectiveness of highly trained service providers by increasing the skills of lesser trained service providers. Later Meyers (1985) stated, ... The potential value of consultation lies in its ability to have this sort of generalized effect since this allows the consultant to influence more children than would be possible with a model based on one-to-one delivery of service to the child (p. 3). This goal of consultation suggests that teachers who have experienced consultation have the potential to independently use the problem-solving techniques and interventions modeled in consultation. In theory, these teachers will be more prepared to teach other children experiencing academic and behavioral difficulties. Teachers with consultation experience also have the potential to be a valuable resource in the school for other teachers. Teachers with increased problem-solving skills should be able to apply those skills when other teachers need assistance with a problem student. While these are important goals, there remains much work to be done toward achieving generalization of teacher consultee repertoires so as to reap schoolwide benefits. This paper applies generalization programming tactics from Stokes and Baer (1977) and Stokes and Osnes' (1989) articles to training teacher consultees so as to foster generalization of their intervention skills. Attention to generalization will support the realization of the full benefits of school consultation. Introduction to the Concept of Generalization Generalization is a term that describes the occurrence of a relevant behavior across time, setting and target in the absence of the conditions that promoted acquisition (Stokes & Baer, 1977). In the first systematic examination of generalization, Stokes and Baer reviewed the history of generalization and provided nine methods of programming generalization. Historically, researchers did not think of generalization as something that needed to be programmed. Rather, generalization was thought to emerge after several pairings of stimuli or treatments. In other words, generalization was viewed as simply something natural and far more effort was placed into understanding how individuals could be trained to discriminate between stimuli rather than generalize across stimuli. Stokes and Baer challenged this belief and provided the first organized list of generalization techniques. Stokes and Osnes (1989) revised this list further differentiating 12 specific methods fostering generalization. How does Consultation Currently Program Generalization? Popular school behavioral consultation models tend to incorporate the effective problem-solving model and empirical behavioral intervention of applied behavior analysis. School consultation models typically do not actively program for generalization of consultation-related behaviors to other students or situations (Noell & Witt, 1996). …

Measuring personality traits in the classroom

In this article, a personality model for the description of children's classroom behaviour is the main focus of interest. It is questioned whether the Five-Factor Personality Model can be used as an organizational structure for the description of personality characteristics in the field of educational practice. Two groups of Dutch school children (N=1296 and N=367), 4–12 years old, were rated by their teachers on scales of the School Behaviour Checklist–Revised (SCHOBL-R, we would like to thank Dr J. N. Zaal for his contribution to the construction of and research with the original School Behavior Checklist (SCHOBL). We also wish to thank Professor G. A. Kohnstamm for his suggestions and comments on the first draft of this article). Analysis of the scales produced four meaningful and identical components in both samples: Extraversion, Attitude towards School Work, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability. The factorial structure of the scales remained stable over age as well as sex. Boys and girls were rated by their teachers as having different attitudes towards school work, and as differing on emotional stability and agreeableness. The items of the school behaviour checklist were then analysed in the context of other personality scales, leading to the conclusion that the four scales of the SCHOBL-R can be interpreted in terms of four of the five personality dimensions of the Five-Factor Model. The strong relationship between the contents of the different scales used in this analysis supports the idea that the Five (Four) Factor Model is a valid model for the description of individual differences in Dutch school children. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Measuring personality traits in the classroom

In this article, a personality model for the description of children's classroom behaviour is the main focus of interest. It is questioned whether the Five-Factor Personality Model can be used as an organizational structure for the description of personality characteristics in the field of educational practice. Two groups of Dutch school children (N=1296 and N=367), 4–12 years old, were rated by their teachers on scales of the School Behaviour Checklist–Revised (SCHOBL-R, we would like to thank Dr J. N. Zaal for his contribution to the construction of and research with the original School Behavior Checklist (SCHOBL). We also wish to thank Professor G. A. Kohnstamm for his suggestions and comments on the first draft of this article). Analysis of the scales produced four meaningful and identical components in both samples: Extraversion, Attitude towards School Work, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability. The factorial structure of the scales remained stable over age as well as sex. Boys and girls were rated by their teachers as having different attitudes towards school work, and as differing on emotional stability and agreeableness. The items of the school behaviour checklist were then analysed in the context of other personality scales, leading to the conclusion that the four scales of the SCHOBL-R can be interpreted in terms of four of the five personality dimensions of the Five-Factor Model. The strong relationship between the contents of the different scales used in this analysis supports the idea that the Five (Four) Factor Model is a valid model for the description of individual differences in Dutch school children. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Psychiatric Comorbidity Associated With DSM-IV ADHD in a Nonreferred Sample of Twins

To test the external validity of the dimensions and subtypes of DSM-IV attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by assessing the prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity. Eight- to 18-year-old twins with ADHD (n = 105) and without ADHD (n = 95) were recruited through local school districts. Comorbid disorders were assessed by structured diagnostic interviews with the parent and child and by a behavioral rating scale completed by the child's classroom teacher. Symptoms of inattention were associated with lower intelligence and higher levels of depression, whereas symptoms of hyperactivity-impulsivity were associated more strongly with symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD). All DSM-IV subtypes were associated with higher rates of ODD and CD in comparison with controls, and the combined type was associated with more disruptive behavior disorder symptoms than the other 2 subtypes. The combined type and predominantly inattentive type were associated with more symptoms of depression than controls or the predominantly hyperactive-impulsive type. These results provide support for the discriminant validity of the dimensions and subtypes of DSM-IV ADHD and suggest that clinicians should carefully screen for comorbid disorders as part of a comprehensive assessment of ADHD.

Elder-Child Interaction Analysis

This study reports on the interactions of 60 children and 12 older adults in a school-based mentoring program, as well as four teachers' perceptions of the relationship between such interactions and the children's subsequent classroom behavior. Dyadic interactions were assessed using the Elder-Child Interaction Analysis instrument (Newman & Onawola, 1989). The authors concluded from recorded observations that, overall, the elders and the children had interacted with each other in a positive and constructive manner. The teachers interviewed perceived that the mentoring interactions were followed by an increase in students' self-management skills, interest in school work, and by improved peer relationships.

Children's classroom behavior: The unique contribution of family organization.

Children's classroom behavior: The unique contribution of family organization.