Content Analysis Of Children Research Articles

Expansive Ways to Be an Environmental Activist: A Content Analysis of Children's Picturebooks from 2016 to 2022 Surrounding the Climate Crisis

Abstract: Drawing on a content analysis of 147 picturebooks published from 2016 to 2022, this article examines whose and which stories are told regarding environmental justice and how educators can honor multiple identities in their instruction, advocacy, and actions toward climate justice. The study begins with findings from the analysis across the larger text set of environmental texts in response to the focal questions of environmentalism and environmental justice. It continues with an analysis of three focal picturebooks spanning various global settings. This article advocates for educators, caregivers, and librarians to foster a critical lens with young readers as they engage with environmental texts to raise critique, envision hope, and promote action. We highlight the value of diverse children's literature around environmentalism and environmental justice to support children to delve into the existing breadth of experiences and narratives in known and lesser-known texts. We argue for the need to read across environmentalism picturebooks broadly to foster a more inclusive view of what environmental stewardship is and can be.

Oopses on the Page: A Content Analysis of Children’s Picturebooks Featuring Mistakes

Oopses on the Page: A Content Analysis of Children’s Picturebooks Featuring Mistakes

Community Matters: Content Analysis of Children in Immigration Media Coverage, 1990-2020

ABSTRACT What role do children play in media coverage of immigration, and what might this tell us about coverage of (and attitudes about) immigration more broadly? This study examines U.S. newspaper coverage of immigration from 1990 to 2020. Using multiple content analytic approaches, I find that newspaper coverage of immigration that includes mentions of children: (a) tends to be more positive in net sentiment, (b) tends not to focus on topics of politics and violence, and (c) tends to correlate with topics about family, education, religion, and community. Threat is found to be a regular feature of this news coverage; however, threat language does not vary systematically with the language of childhood or race. In all, these findings point to the salience of (positive) language about community in coverage about immigrant children. These findings are discussed as they relate to the impact of childhood representation in news coverage about immigration in the U.S., and how cueing community, such as family, when evaluating immigrants has the potential to produce more pro-immigrant attitudes amongst the American population.

ОТВЕТЫ МЛАДШИХ ШКОЛЬНИКОВ НА ЗАДАНИЯ СТАНДАРТНЫХ ПРОГРЕССИВНЫХ МАТРИЦ РАВЕНА: ЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ И ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ АНАЛИЗ

Background. Questions regarding what exactly is measured by the most popular intelligence test — Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM), and how the age-dependent characteristics of thinking process are impacting the performance, are still debatable and insuffi ciently studied. Objective. Th e study had its purpose to reveal the characteristics of the thinking process in the elementary school students, at the age of 7 and 9, engaged in the performance of the SPM tasks. Methods. A three-stage study combining the cross-sectional and longitudinal methods with content analysis of children’s justifi cations for choosing specifi c answers on diff erent test items. Sample. 46 students from Moscow school with an advanced level of complexity (21 boys and 25 girls) took the test twice — in the 1st grade (mean age 7,5 years, range: 6,11–8,0) and in the 3rd grade (mean age 9,6 years, range: 9,0–10,0). Results. Th e analysis of children’s explanations, recorded while they were solving the SPM problems aloud, and the logical analysis of their wrong answers, based on their concordance with the structure of the SPM test, showed that there are not only quantitative, but also qualitative changes in intellectual development of children aged 7 and 9. Conclusion. Th e same mistake made by children of diff erent age might be an indicator of the diff erent levels of their intellectual abilities. Th e diff erent ways they use to solve the SPM tasks might be due to the qualitatively diff erent thinking processes, characteristic for a certain age. Th erefore, the results obtained by means of SPM test must be supplemented with the qualitative analysis of wrong answers in order to assess the true level of mental abilities of a child at the elementary school level.

Drawing Play: A Content Analysis of Children's Drawings of Places Where They Like to Play

Abstract: This study sought to understand where children like to play using arts-based methods. Participants were recruited from a large US medical clinic serving a predominantly Latinx and low-income urban area. While waiting to see the doctor for a well-child visit, 19 6- to 12-year-old children were given drawing materials and asked to draw the places where they like to play. We conducted a descriptive content analysis of identifiable elements in the drawings, followed by an interpretive analysis of locations, social relationships, and activities. Children's drawings predominantly depicted outdoor environments and physical activities. Few drawings depicted children playing with others.

Viewer-Centered Learning in the Museum: Tensions in Children’s Books About Why and How

Art museum educators have drawn on contemporary learning theories emphasizing viewers’ meaning-making as individual, constructed, contextual, and subject to interpretation. This learner-centered turn toward meaning-making and away from the object and the discipline of art applies especially to young children’s learning, which needs to be scaffolded. Children’s picture books are a tool for introducing young learners to the museum and making meaning from art. Content analysis of children’s picture books reveals portrayals of museums as temples for passive contemplation as well as active learning; not all learning strategies emphasize meaning-making, and children work against and with the museum to connect their own experiences to meaning-making. Teachers using children’s literature to introduce the art museum as a viewer-centered place of meaning-making should use care in selecting books and consider counternarratives to frame the books’ stories to suit their purpose, methods, and learning outcomes for visiting the museum.

Boys Go, Girls Go Along: exploring gender and price differences regarding themes present on children’s graphic t-shirts

PurposeUsing gender schema theory, this study aims to explore how children’s graphic t-shirts from clothing retailers in the USA differed on gendered themes for graphic t-shirts targeting boys or girls, in addition to differences for shirts that were higher in cost.Design/methodology/approachThis content analysis of children’s t-shirts included 866 child-targeted shirts taken from the online retail portals from 11 clothing retailers in the USA. Shirts were coded for gendered themes on the front torso part of the shirt and included traditional boy themes (e.g. aggression, instrumentality) and girl themes (e.g. compassion, passivity). In addition, the retail prices for each shirt were recorded at the time of data collection.FindingsThe results demonstrated that children’s graphic t-shirts starkly differentiate between femininity and masculinity based on their target. Boys’ shirts were significantly more likely to feature active themes, whereas girls’ shirts were more likely to focus on social belonging and interpersonal connection. Boys’ shirts were also more likely to display themes linked to dominance/aggression but not compassion. Girls’ shirts were more likely to tout both shyness and attention seeking. Finally, results generally showed that higher priced t-shirts were less likely to feature gender stereotypes than lower-priced t-shirts.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first known study that has looked at the marketing of children’s clothes in retail environments with a specific focus on gender and gender stereotyping.

Introducing Iranian Primary Children to Atoms and Molecules

In common with many other countries, the Iranian science curriculum does not introduce primary children to atoms and molecules but instead leaves the teaching of these concepts until high school. This paper challenges this practice and describes the changes in elementary Iranian children’s understanding of atoms and molecules following a 10-h teaching intervention about basic atomic-molecular theory, derived from recently published Australian research. The participants involved in this study are a group of 25 Iranian children aged 9 to 12 years old, who participated in a vacation summer school where they were taught about the structure of atoms and molecules. Thematic and content analysis of children’s written responses and drawings before and after the intervention reveal significant changes in their conceptual thinking. The results also show the extent to which the children can generate microscopic representations of the states of matter from their understanding of atoms and molecules.

Whitewashing Nature: Sanitized Depictions of Biology in Children's Books and Parent-Child Conversation.

The biological world includes many negatively valenced activities, like predation, parasitism, and disease. Do children's books cover these activities? And how do parents discuss them with their children? In a content analysis of children's nature books (Study 1), we found that negatively valenced concepts were rarely depicted across genres and reading levels. When parents encountered negative information in books (Studies 2-3), they did not omit it but rather elaborated on it, adding their own comments and questions, and their children (ages 3-11) were more likely to remember the negative information but less likely to generalize that information beyond the animal in the book. These findings suggest that early input relevant to biological competition may hamper children's developing understanding of ecology and evolution.

Divergent thinking in four-year-old children: An analysis of thinking processes in performing the Alternative Uses Task

The present study examined the divergent thinking (DT) processes of four-year-old children, as part of a longitudinal project that investigates the development of DT in children. Following a similar approach used in a study with adults, children were encouraged to report on their thinking processes through interactive dialogues while performing a widely used DT task, the Alternative Uses Task (AUT). Content analysis of children’s utterances revealed that children generated uses mostly based on automatic, bottom-up associative processes and occasionally based on effortful, top-down executive processes. Using (multilevel) regression analysis, we found that (1) both associative and executive DT processes predicted children’s fluency scores on the AUT, whilst only the executive DT process Performing mental operations on the stimulus uniquely predicted originality; (2) children at the age of four years already showed a serial order effect in the originality of their responses, indicating that the originality of uses increased the later a particular use was generated in the series of mentioned uses; and (3) similar serial order effects characterized the occurrence of executive processes. These results suggest that increasing originality depends on increasing involvement of effortful executive processes. Especially the executive process of mentally isolating properties or parts of objects and the subsequent recombination of these parts and properties into a new structured whole might be a key characteristic of DT to generate original ideas.

Assessment of School Student Achievement in Traditional vs Developmental Education: Psychological and Pedagogical Analysis

This study is a theoretical analysis of two student assessment systems that are most common in Russian schools: traditional performance grading and evaluation within the developmental education paradigm proposed by Daniil Elkonin and Vasily Davydov, which implies a set of assessment criteria for different types of achievement, self-assessment, peer assessment, and no focus on assessment results or comparisons.Elementary school students enrolled in traditional and developmental education systems became participants in two empirical studies. Projective techniques (Three Wishes and Three Questions to a Wise Man) were used to measure grades’ related anxiety among third- to fourth-graders in traditional (TE) and developmental classes (DE). Content analysis of children’s spontaneous wishes and questions to a wise man (N(TE) = 327, N(DE) = 153) shows that students in traditional classes are more anxious about their grades than those in developmental classes. In addition, only children in the traditional education system focus on formal assessment at the expense of mastery-based learning outcomes.The second study measured the relationship between grades and academic perseverance, motivation, and self-concept (N(TE) = 309, N(DE) = 78). The value and role of grades may vary in the structure of intrinsic and extrinsic academic motivation and perseverance, as their motivational function differs between the two systems of student assessment. Findings support the idea of organizing school assessments in the logic of developmental education, which is more differentiated, mastery-oriented, and objective. Furthermore, it is originally implemented in cooperation with children, supports the values of enquiry, initiative, independent thinking, and collective discussion, and is less focused on external control and diligence.

Educational Environment and Indicators of Child Development

The article presents the author's approach to the interpretation of the concept of the educational environment of the school, based on the activity theory of A. N. Leontyev and on learning activity theory of D. B. Elkonin – V. V. Davydov. Significant features of two types of educational environments – the developing educational environment and the environment based on traditional educational content – are highlighted. A broad diagnostic research into the indicators of cognitive, social and personal development of students of these two types of educational environments was carried out. The study involved 2,304 students in the 5th and 9th grades from 24 schools.
 To assess cognitive development, data from two tests is used: CFT2 and the “Transposition” method (author A. Z. Zak). An original diagnostic procedure has been developed to distinguish the role of factors of biological maturation and the educational environment of a particular school in the process of cognitive development of students.
 Several sources were used to diagnose the social aspects of student development. This is a sociometric test, analysis of interactions in the system “students-teacher,” recorded in the course of observation at the lesson (based on the author's “scheme of lesson analysis” – authors I. M. Ulanovskaya, N. I. Polivanova, E. V. Vysotskaya) and content analysis of children's essays on the topic “My school.”
 Indicators of personal development of students were determined by the scale “self-assessment and level of aspiration” test and the test of school anxiety (A. Prihodjan).
 All data was subjected to statistical and qualitative analysis. The results obtained showed a high efficiency of the developing educational environment in the cognitive development of students. This is an expected result, since the programs used in developing educational environment are aimed at developing theoretical thinking based on the development of special educational content and appropriate forms of organization of the learning process.
 Our results showed that educational environment developing qualitatively changes the sociometric structure of the class, making it more psychologically comfortable for students, increases cognitive motivation and reduces educational anxiety, makes self-assessment and level of aspiration more differentiated.

A Critical Content Analysis of Children’s Nonfiction Books of Korea

This article analyzes 32 nonfiction picture books about South Korea, drawing on Said’s (in: Essed and Goldberg (eds) Race critical theories, Blackwell Publishing, Maden, pp 15–37, 2002) critical perspectives of Orientalism and Imagined Geography. Specifically, we explore the nature of informational books, arguing that readers consume these designs as a commodity rather than as an informational resource. In doing so, we unpack falsities about South Korea as reflected in Western readers’ and authors’ understandings of imagined geography. Findings show nonfiction books about Korea as a global culture feature five categories of inaccurate and false information: (1) the complete made-up story, (2) partially accurate information (3) overgeneralized statements, (4) outdated information, and (5) mismatched visual information. By focusing on nonfiction picture books for children, we underscore the obligation that book creators (authors and publishers) have to ensure the veracity of knowledge (re)production and circulations about Korean people and culture.

Особенности структуры образной креативности у школьников младшего и старшего возраста

A study of age-related characteristics of creativity may aid understanding of mechanisms related to thinking style formation and identify the patterns of creative development in school students. Longitudinal studies indicate that the creative potential of children may be a predictor of their future social and personal success. The paper presents the results of studying age characteristics of imaginative creativity in schoolchildren aged 9–15. The age range is chosen in view of the evidence on uneven manifestation of creative abilities in children due to nonlinear dynamics of intellectual development. The quantitative assessment of creativity indices (originality, fluency, and flexibility) used a computerized data processing tool. The data was obtained through Torrance’s “Circles” task and “Incomplete Figures” task. The study revealed higher originality of drawings in older students compared to younger ones when performing the “Circles” task. This may be due to the age-related categorical expansion of the range of imaginary objects under the conditions when imaginative stereotypes have to be abandoned. The “Incomplete Figures” task did not reveal any reliable intergroup differences in creativity indices. However, in younger school students it showed their correlation with interest and difficulty level (self-assessed). A higher appreciation of the difficulty of the task by older students may indicate age-related willingness to inject motivation in creative productivity. The content analysis of children’s imaginative creativity showed that the age-related structural reorganization of imaginative creativity may be based on the changes in the thematic categories of ideas generated by students: younger school students opt for such thematic categories as “Nature”, “Fantasy”, “Toys”, whereas older students tend to choose other categories with the priority given to the category “Person”.

Gender Representation in Children’s Books: Case of an Early Childhood Setting

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this small-scale case study was to identify and analyze key patterns in terms of gender representation in children’s books in one early childhood setting. Furthermore, this case study sought to understand the perspectives of early childhood educators on gender representation in children’s books. The researcher employed multiple methods of data collection, including content analysis of 15 children’s books, as well as reflective journal writing and professional conversation between eight educators from one early childhood center in Dublin, Ireland. Content analysis of children’s books revealed distinct gender patterns that include underrepresentation of female characters and instances of gender stereotyping. Further findings indicate that educators exhibit a lack of awareness of gender patterns and attribute limited importance to gender representation in children’s books. This research hopes to aid early childhood educators in becoming aware of gender stereotyping in children’s books, enhancing observation and reflective skills, and creating a more inclusive learning environment.

Analysis of Component of Aggression in the Stories of Elementary School Aggressive Children

The purpose of this study is the content analysis of children’s stories based on the components of aggression. Participants are 66 elementary school students (16 girls and 50 boys) selected from fourth and fifth grades, using the Relational and Overt Aggression Questionnaire; completed by the teachers. Draw a Story Test (Silver, 2005) is administered to select aggressive children who narrates stories based on their drawn pictures in response to DAS pictures. DAS Test consists of a series of figures which children respond by drawing a picture and telling a story related to the picture. This provides us with the information about their self image and emotional content. After deciding the components of aggression based on theories of Crick et al. (1997), and Crick and Dodge (1996), the stories are analyzed using the quantitative content analysis technique. The results reveals that the narrated stories of aggressive children have engagement ratio of 1.62, which means more than 50% of children showed aggressive components. The highest frequency of aggression in their stories is related to murdering, killing and hurting others.

The Representation of Altruistic and Egoistic Motivations in Children’s TV Programming

A content analysis of children’s television examined the frequency with which behaviors were (a) driven by altruistic versus egoistic motivations, (b) performed by affable/surly characters, (c) rewarded/punished, and (d) present in content popular among different age groups (2–5, 6–11, and 12–17 years old). We found that portrayal patterns stressed the importance of egoistic motivations (particularly competence, autonomy, and relatedness) for older children. The findings are interpreted in line with logic underlying the model of intuitive morality and exemplars (MIME; Tamborini, 2013), suggesting that media representations can influence the motivations of their viewers.

Food Advertisements on Television:A Content Analysis of Children’s Channel and Efficacy of Media Literacy Programme

Food Advertisements on Television:A Content Analysis of Children’s Channel and Efficacy of Media Literacy Programme

PECULIARITIES OF INTERNAL PARENT POSITION IN TEENAGE CHILDREN

В статье рассматривается понятие «внутренняя позиция будущего родителя» среди детей подросткового возраста 15–17 лет. Обсуждается гипотеза о влиянии наполненности опытом выполнения специфических для родительства деятельностей в период до рождения собственных детей на формирование представлений о родительстве. В качестве методов исследования были использованы: «Анкета для выявления представлений о будущем ребенке», рисуночные методики «Моя семья» и «Моя семья в будущем», а также контент-анализ детских высказываний в «Родительском сочинении». В результате были выделены компоненты внутренней позиции и описано их содержание. Определены типы и критерии сформированности внутренней позиции родителя у подростков. Сделан вывод о наличии взаимосвязи между опытом взаимодействия с младенцем и характером внутренней позиции родителя. Полученные данные могут быть применены в составлении профилактических и коррекционных программ, направленных на формирование родительской сферы у подростков.

Inter-rater Reliability of Criteria-Based Content Analysis of Children's Statements of Abuse.

The evaluation of children's statements of sexual abuse cases in forensic cases is critically important and must and reliable. Criteria-based content analysis (CBCA) is the main component of the statement validity assessment (SVA), which is the most frequently used approach in this setting. This study investigated the inter-rater reliability (IRR) of CBCA in a forensic context. Three independent raters evaluated the transcripts of 95 statements of sexual abuse. IRR was calculated for each criterion, total score, and overall evaluation. The IRR was variable for the criteria, with several being unsatisfactory. But high IRR was found for the total CBCA scores (Kendall's W=0.84) and for overall evaluation (Kendall's W=0.65). Despite some shortcomings, SVA remains a robust method to be used in the comprehensive evaluation of children's statements of sexual abuse in the forensic setting. However, the low IRR of some CBCA criteria could justify some technical improvements.