First-year School Research Articles

Changes and Paths of Children’s Happiness in Early Elementary School: Focusing on the Mediating Effects of Self-Esteem and the Moderating Effects of Gender

Objectives: This study aimed to identify changes in the children’s happiness and in the paths from their academic performances, school adjustment after elementary school entrance, and the mediating effects of self-esteem and moderating effects of gender.Methods: Data from 400 children were used from the 8th to the 10th wave of the Panel Study on Korean Children. Children answered questions about their happiness and self-esteem, and their teachers rated academic performance and school adjustment. The latent growth model, path analysis, boot-strapping, and multi-group analysis were used with AMOS.Results: Children’s happiness showed the 2nd-year-change model. Gender was a significant predictor of their initial happiness values. Paths to children’s happiness were different based on grade. First-graders’ happiness was directly explained by school adjustment and indirectly explained by their academic performance through self-esteem. Second-graders’ happiness was affected only by their self-esteem; the school adjustment also showed significant direct effects on happiness in the third grade. The mediating effects of children’s self-esteem on academic performance and happiness were only evident in the first year of school. Finally, children’s gender didn’t have any significant Δχ<sup>2</sup> differences in the path of all the grades.Conclusion: Children’s happiness starts at different levels by gender and increase after the first year of elementary school. Children have different paths to happiness depending on the grade. Self-esteem fully mediates academic performance and children’s happiness in the first-year of school, and school adjustment directly affects children’s happiness. Paths to children’s happiness are similar between boys and girls.

Implementing an online peer tutoring intervention to promote reading skills of elementary students: Effects on fluency and accuracy

The global COVID-19 pandemic disrupted face-to-face teaching, having a significant impact on the teaching-learning process. As a result, many students spent less time reading (and learning to read) than they did during face-to-face instruction, requiring the use of alternative approaches of instruction. A combined online and peer tutoring intervention was designed to improve reading skills such as fluency and accuracy. Following a quasi-experimental design, this study sought to evaluated the impact of implementing an online peer tutoring intervention on the development of reading fluency and accuracy in a sample of 91 2nd and 4th graders (49.6% female). Children were aged 6–10 years old (M = 7.81, SD = 1.10) and were enrolled in five classrooms (A, B, C, D, and E) from three schools in the Portuguese district of Porto, between January and May 2021. A set of 10 texts were chosen from official textbooks to assess reading fluency and accuracy. Classes were evaluated in three moments: initial (pre-intervention), intermediate (after 10 sessions) and final (post-test, after other 10 sessions). In order to examine the effects of the intervention, there was a 8-week lag between the start of the intervention in classes A, B, and C (experimental group) and classes D and E (control group). Moreover, classes D and E started intervention with a gap of 5 weeks between them. Students in the experimental group registered significant higher improvements in reading accuracy and fluency than in the control group. Interaction effects revealed that students with an initial lower performance (i.e., at the frustration level) showed higher increases in reading accuracy. Furthermore, 2nd graders showed higher increases throughout the intervention while the 4th graders stablished their progress after the first 10 sessions of intervention. Despite the study’s limitations, the findings support the positive impact that online peer tutoring can have on promoting students’ reading skills, adding to the ongoing discussion—which has gained a special emphasis with the COVID-19 pandemic—about the development of effective strategies to promote reading abilities in the first years of school.

Comparison of Motor Difficulties Measured in the First Year of School among Children Who Attended Rural Outdoor or Urban Conventional Kindergartens.

Kindergartens can potentially contribute substantially to the daily level of physical activity and development of motor skills and might be an ideal setting for improving these as a public health initiative. We aimed to examine whether children from rural outdoor kindergartens had a lower risk of motor difficulties than children from urban conventional kindergartens. Motor test results were measured during the first school year by school health nurses using a six-item test of gross- and fine motor skills (jumping, handle a writing tool, cutting with a scissor following a line, one-leg stand on each leg, throwing and grabbing). Register-based information was available on potential confounding factors. We included 901 children from outdoor kindergartens and 993 from conventional kindergartens with a mean (SD) age of 6.5 years (0.4). The children from the two types of kindergarten differed according to demographic information, with outdoor kindergarten children more often being from more affluent families (long maternal education level: 47.5% vs. 31.0%, p < 0.0001) and fewer girls attending the outdoor kindergartens (42.7% vs. 49.5%, p = 0.003). In the adjusted models, we found no evidence of differences in the risk of motor difficulties between children attending either type of kindergarten (OR: 0.95, 95%CI: 0.71; 1.27, p = 0.72). Our results do not support outdoor kindergartens as a potential intervention to improve motor abilities among children. Randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm these findings.

Computer-Based Development of Reading Skills to Reduce Dropout in Uncertain Times.

An adequate level of reading comprehension is a prerequisite for successful learning. Numerous studies have shown that without a solid foundation, there can be severe difficulties in later learning and that failure in the first years of schooling can determine attitudes to learning. In the present study, we present the effect size of an online game-based training program implemented on eDia. The primary goals of the development program are to develop fluency in reading and reading comprehension in Grades 3–4. The content of the program has been developed in accordance with the national core curriculum and the textbooks based on it. Therefore, it can be integrated into both classroom-based lessons and extracurricular activities outside of class. The quasiexperimental research involved 276 students. Propensity score matching was used in examining the effect size of the development program to increase the validity of the results. Through the training program, the development of students in the intervention group accelerated greatly (d = .51), which proved to be even higher in the lowest and average skill groups (d1 = 1.81; d2 = .92) as well as in the disadvantaged student group (d = .72). Latent-change analyses confirmed the sensitivity, relevance, and importance of developing comprehension at 9–10 years of age and the generalizability of the results (χ2 = 421.5; df = 272; p < .05; CFI = .950; TLI = .945; RMSEA = .045 (CI: .036, .153). The study provided evidence that a well-designed online training program is suitable for developing comprehension and overcoming disadvantages, even without the presence of the teacher outside the classroom.

8.K. Workshop: Pillars of health promotion and the role of Health literacy in the life course approach

Abstract Three pillars are considered today for the development of Health Promotion: Good Governance, Healthy Cities and Health Literacy (HL) (The Shanghai Declaration, WHO 2016). Good Governance and policies to make healthy choices accessible and affordable to all, will ensure that all have the right to health. Sustainable environments are critical to make whole of society collaboration real and it is relevant that Cities become healthier settings. For this, increasing knowledge and social skills to help people make healthiest choices and decisions, i.e. Health Literacy (HL), emerges as the third pillar of the health promotion agenda today. The 10th WHO World conference in 2021 emphasized the role of HL in Health Governance (Stewarding for a flourishing future) that “... builds on co-design and makes full use of the digital transformation to achieve equitable benefits across populations, ensuring access and meaningful participation. This includes a high priority assigned to health literacy along the life course’ (WHO 2021). This workshop discusses how this third pillar (i.e. HL) may be translated into the everyday practice of Health Promotion “ensuring that people can cope with the challenges they face, through health literacy, ... to lead lives ... in harmony with Nature” (WHO 2021). From the public health perspective the aim of this workshop is to share with the audience an opportunity to immerse in four different social contexts and explore their HL practices as tracer approaches. The first context is set in Brazil and the emphasis is on HL role in increasing health knowledge. The authors share the results of a large research and an ethnographic analysis of the role of HL in the development of health decisions in the context of public libraries. The second presentation will unveil one of the topics that is influencing health and well-being today: the struggle to counter misleading information. Therefore, a study case from Portugal will focus on HL impact of nutritional marketing on the preferences, attitudes and consumption of children from 6 to 10 years old. A third presentation will consider food sustainability &amp; health, and how HL may be expanded using simple and integrative pedagogical strategies in usual kindergarten dynamics to promote legumeś consumption. Understand how children construct their HL and how influenced they are in this process is the aim of the 4th presentation, where an analysis will be proposed in the quest of exploring HL on those in the first years of schooling. This workshop offers a forum for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers interested in health promotion pillars (e.g. like health literacy). By dialogue and two-way communication lively interaction and vivid discussions will be facilitated. This will allow discussing results regarding their benefit for improving policy research, practice, and policy-making, support further synergies, facilitate networking and collaboration, and support international capacity building. Key messages • Refinement of concepts and practices (e.g. on health literacy) from south-north cultural contexts is needed for wider health promotion implementation strategies. • The third pillar of Health Promotion (i.e. health literacy) demands a wider reflection of theoretical integrative approaches of health paradigms like salutogenesis.

Developmental trajectories of symbolic magnitude and order processing and their relation with arithmetic development

Efficient processing of absolute magnitude and relative order of numbers is key for arithmetic development. This longitudinal study tested 1) whether there is a developmental shift in the contribution of symbolic magnitude and order processing to arithmetic between Grades 1 and 2, and 2) whether the development of symbolic numerical abilities is characterized by reciprocal predictive relations. In two independent samples (UK: N = 195, Austria: N = 161), order processing did not predict early developmental change in arithmetic, but emerged as a predictor in Grade 2. Symbolic magnitude processing in Grade 1 predicted subsequent developmental change in arithmetic, but not later on. Moreover, we observed cross-lagged relations between symbolic magnitude and order processing. Our findings confirm that the contributions of symbolic magnitude and order processing to arithmetic development are interactive and change across the first years of schooling. This may be driven by a developmental shift from procedural strategies to retrieval of arithmetic facts. • Symbolic magnitude processing was a predictor of arithmetic development in Grade 1, but not in Grade 2. • Order processing did not predict developmental change in Grade 1, emerging as a unique predictor of arithmetic in Grade 2. • Cross-lagged predictive relations between symbolic magnitude and order processing across the entire study period. • Interactive and changing contributions of symbolic magnitude and order processing to arithmetic development.

School Age Developmental Outcomes of Children Conceived by IVF Compared with Controls: A Population Linkage Study

Background: There has been increasing interest in assessing longer term developmental and health outcomes in IVF-conceived offspring compared with those born after natural conception. So far, the findings have been conflicting. The Australian Early Developmental Consensus (AEDC) assesses children in their first year of primary school across five domains; physical health and wellbeing, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive skills, and communication skills and general knowledge. Aim: To compare school entry (5-7 years of age) outcomes in IVF-conceived children in Victoria with naturally conceived controls. Method: We undertook a statewide data linkage study, with perinatal data (births 2005-2014) linked to data from major IVF providers in Victoria and the AEDC. Our approach to analysis included: complete case analysis, multiple imputation of missing data, consideration of clustering (siblings) and inverse probability weighted modeling to adjust for covariates. Our primary outcome was an AEDC score indicative of developmental vulnerability in two or more domains. We adjusted for the child’s age at assessment, sex, highest level of maternal education, maternal age, parity, SEIFA (Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas) quintile, language background other than English, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) status. Results: The linked dataset comprised 163,418 children, including 4,441 IVF-conceived children. The IVF conceived population had older, more highly educated mothers who lived in more affluent areas and were less likely to be from non-English speaking backgrounds or identify as ATSI. IVF-conceived children were less likely to be developmentally vulnerable, in both unadjusted (RR 0.59, 95%CI: 0.52-0.67, p&lt;0.001) and adjusted analyses (aRR 0.72, 95%CI: 0.58-0.88, p&lt;0.001). Conclusion: Children conceived by IVF were less likely to be developmentally vulnerable in their first year of schooling, compared with peers conceived naturally. Further research should aim to understand if similar patterns are seen in other education and health domains and the potential mechanisms for these differences.

Challenges faced by Preservice Teachers in Planning and Exploring Tasks that Promote Mathematical Reasoning

Background: Mathematical reasoning is fundamental for mathematics learning from the first years of schooling. It is a challenge for students and teachers, so it is relevant to deepen ways to develop this ability with the prospective teachers. Objectives: Identify the challenges in supervised practice with a view to developing students’ mathematical reasoning, seeking to answer the following question: What challenges do prospective teachers face in planning and exploring tasks that promote mathematical reasoning? Design: It is based on a formative experiment and follows an interpretive methodology. Setting and participants: This experiment was conducted during 13 sessions of the curricular unit (CU) Didactics of Mathematics of the 2nd year of the master’s course in Pre-School Education and Teaching of the 1st Cycle of Basic Education, in a class of 25 students. The participants were four students - two pairs in teaching practice- whose selection followed the following criteria: not having any of the researchers as teaching practice supervisors and regularly intervening in class. Data collection and analysis: the data were collected through participant observation of the CU classes, interviews, and document collection. Results: Students face more challenges associated with mathematical reasoning during monitoring phases of the exploration of the tasks and their final discussion. Conclusions: These results point to the need for initial training programs to prioritise activities that support prospective teachers in the understanding of mathematical reasoning processes and that involve them in the planning of tasks and analysing practical exploration that will enhance their development.

The Evolution of an Innovative Online Task to Monitor Children's Oral Narrative Development.

Oral narrative abilities are an important measure of children's language competency and have predictive value for children's later academic performance. Research and development underway in New Zealand is advancing an innovative online oral narrative task. This task uses audio recordings of children's story retells, speech-to-text software and language analysis to record, transcribe, analyse and present oral narrative and listening comprehension data back to class teachers. The task has been designed for class teachers' use with the support of SLP or literacy specialists in data interpretation. Teachers are upskilled and supported in order to interpret these data and implement teaching practices for students through online professional learning and development modules, within the context of a broader evidence-based approach to early literacy instruction. This article describes the development of this innovative, culturally relevant, online tool for monitoring children's oral narrative ability and listening comprehension in their first year of school. Three phases of development are outlined, showing the progression of the tool from a researcher-administered task during controlled research trials, to wide-scale implementation with thousands of students throughout New Zealand. The current iteration of the tool uses an automatic speech-recognition system with specifically trained transcription models and support from research assistants to check transcription, then code and analyse the oral narrative. This reduces transcription and analysis time to ~7 min, with a word error rate of around 20%. Future development plans to increase the accuracy of automatic transcription and embed basic language analysis into the tool, with the aim of removing the need for support from research assistants.

유아의 또래놀이 상호작용이 초등학교 취학 후 학업수행 능력에 미치는 영향

Objectives This study examines the effect of preschool children's peer play interactions and their performance at elementary school level academic performance with academic ability and school adjustment as dual mediating factors. Methods For this purpose, data from the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education(KICCE)’s seventh (2014), eighth (2015), and tenth (2017) Panel Study on Korean Children(PSKC) was used. Data from a total of 438 children was analyzed using Process Marco(Model 6). Results First, it was found that preschool children’s peer play interaction mediates their academic ability and that it significantly affects the academic performance when they are 3rd graders in elementary school. Second, the preschool children’s peer play interaction had a significant effect on the academic performance when they are 3rd graders which was mediated by school adjustment during their first year in school. Third, the preschool children’s peer play interaction was found to have a significant effect on the academic performance when they are in 3rd grade which was in turn mediated by the academic ability and the school adjustment during first grade. Conclusions This suggests that preschool children's experiences of peer play interaction can have a positive effect on their elementary school life. In addition, this study is meaningful in that it reexamined the value of play in early childhood and the meaning of interaction with peers.

A better start literacy approach: effectiveness of Tier 1 and Tier 2 support within a response to teaching framework

The Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA) is a strengths-based approach to supporting children’s literacy learning in their first year of school. Previous research has shown the approach is effective at accelerating foundational literacy knowledge in children with lower levels of oral language. This study examined the impact of the BSLA for children with varied language profiles and across schools from diverse socioeconomic communities. Additionally, a controlled analysis of the impact of Tier 2 teaching within a response to teaching framework was undertaken. Participants included 402 five-year-old children from 14 schools in New Zealand. A randomised delayed treatment design was utilised to establish the effect of Tier 1 teaching. Analyses showed a significant Tier 1 intervention effect for phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge, non-word reading and non-word spelling. There was no difference in intervention effects across socioeconomic groupings. Children were identified for Tier 2 teaching after 10 weeks of Tier 1 implementation. The progress of 98 children in response to Tier 2 teaching was compared to 26 children who met Tier 2 criteria but received only Tier 1 teaching within this study. Children in the Tier 2 group scored significantly higher on phonological awareness, non-word reading, and spelling than the control group at the post-Tier 2 assessment point, after controlling for pre-Tier 2 scores. The results suggest that a proactive strengths-based approach to supporting foundational literacy learning in children’s first year of school benefits all learners. The findings have important implications for early provision of literacy learning support in order to reduce current inequities in literacy outcomes.

From early childhood to the first year of school: Connecting practices for mathematics learning and teaching

This article reports from a Teacher-led Innovation Fund project that investigated connecting practices and resources for mathematical learning between a kindergarten and the first year of school. Teachers at both sites were teacher-researchers in the 2-year project. Our results highlighted expected and unexpected aspects of connections and connecting practices. Language played a critical role, and even brief drops of language were used by teachers to identify opportunities for further mathematical learning. Another finding was that teachers became more attuned to mathematical possibilities and included more questions and provocations, resulting in extended mathematical conversations.

Recognising young children as mathematicians: Connecting mathematical concepts to practices, pedagogy and play

Children are active and creative mathematical learners in the early years. This article reports part of a Teacher-led Innovation Fund (TLIF) project that investigated children’s mathematical activity at an early childhood centre and the first year of school. Teacher–researchers were from each site, and mathematical opportunities were identified in children’s play, based on their interests or from teacher provocations. Examples of children’s explorations are reported that illustrate collaborative, creative, and curious mathematical activity, similar to practices of mathematicians. The roles of teachers were crucial in recognising opportunities and contributing questions to sustain and extend conversations.

Female Teachers’ Effect on Their Pupils’ Voting Behavior and Views on Female Labor Force Participation

Abstract Using independently collected individual-level data, this study examines the influence of learning in a female teacher homeroom class in elementary school on pupils’ future voting behavior. Furthermore, it evaluates the female teacher’s effect on their preference for women’s participation in the workplace in adulthood. We find that having a female teacher in the first year of school makes individuals more likely to vote for female candidates and prefer female labor participation policies in adulthood. However, this effect is only observed among male pupils. These findings offer new evidence for the female socialization hypothesis. (JEL codes: D72, D78, J16, and I21)

Finger-Based Numerical Training Increases Sensorimotor Activation for Arithmetic in Children-An fNIRS Study.

Most children use their fingers when learning to count and calculate. These sensorimotor experiences were argued to underlie reported behavioral associations of finger gnosis and counting with mathematical skills. On the neural level, associations were assumed to originate from overlapping neural representations of fingers and numbers. This study explored whether finger-based training in children would lead to specific neural activation in the sensorimotor cortex, associated with finger movements, as well as the parietal cortex, associated with number processing, during mental arithmetic. Following finger-based training during the first year of school, trained children showed finger-related arithmetic effects accompanied by activation in the sensorimotor cortex potentially associated with implicit finger movements. This indicates embodied finger-based numerical representations after training. Results for differences in neural activation between trained children and a control group in the IPS were less conclusive. This study provides the first evidence for training-induced sensorimotor plasticity in brain development potentially driven by the explicit use of fingers for initial arithmetic, supporting an embodied perspective on the representation of numbers.

Children’s memories of starting school: Building and sharing transitions capital

This paper explores memories of children in the upper years of primary school about their transition into the first year of school and the ways in which this transition impacted on their ongoing relationship with primary school. The insights shared by eleven Year four and five students (aged 10–11 years; five boys and six girls) in an Australian primary school contribute to understandings of the strategies children develop and utilise in their educational transitions (transitions capital), not only in the transition to school but also in ongoing educational transitions throughout school. The older children reflected on their younger selves related to transitions expectations, and experiences and illustrated their strategies for self-management of change, positioning them as potential resources within transition programs. Despite this, the participants reported that their expertise and experience generally were not acknowledged, and they were often not invited to contribute to transition programs involving new school entrants.

Meeting multiplicative thinking through thought-provoking tasks

Children’s multiplicative thinking as the recognition of equal group structures and the enumeration of the composite units was the subject of this research. In this paper, we provide an overview of the Multiplication and Division Investigations project. The results were obtained from a small sample of Australian children (n = 21) in their first year of school (mean age 5 years 6 months) who participated in a teaching experiment of five lessons taught by their classroom teacher. The tasks introduced children to the “equal groups” aspect of multiplication. A theoretical framework of constructivist learning, together with research literature underpinning early multiplicative thinking, tasks, and children’s thinking, was used to design the research. Our findings indicate that young children could imagine equal group structures and, in doing so, recognise and enumerate composite units. As the children came to these tasks without any prior formal instruction, it seemed that they had intuitive understandings of equal group structures based on their life experiences. We argue that the implications for teaching include creating learning provocations that elicit children’s early ideas of multiplication, visualisation, and abstraction. The research has also shown the importance of observing children, listening to their explanations of their thinking, and using insights provided by their drawings.

Children’s drawings of student-teacher relationship quality: examining change over the first year of school.

ABSTRACT The relationships students form with their teachers are critical to children's early school adjustment and later school success. While previous research has relied on teachers' single-point ratings of student-teacher relationship (STR) quality, this study included data provided by children and teachers at two time-points in the kindergarten year. Children's drawings of themselves and their teacher were coded using Fury, Carlson, and Sroufe's (1997) attachment-based scoring of Relational Negativity. Children's feelings about their teacher were rated on the School Feelings Questionnaire (Bowes et al., 2009). Teachers completed the Student Teacher Relationship Scale (Pianta, 2001) and Teacher Rating Scale of School Adjustment (Birch & Ladd, 1997). Results showed that Relational Negativity at the start of school aligned with teachers' STR ratings, but by the end of the year, children's and teachers' ratings had diverged. Children were twice as likely as teachers to express increased negativity. Possible explanations for different perceptions of STR are proposed.

Socioeconomic disparities in early language development in two Norwegian samples

Socioeconomic disparities in early language are widespread and have long-lasting effects. The aim of this study is to investigate when social gaps in language problems arise and how they change across the first years of schooling. We address this question in two large longitudinal Norwegian datasets: the Behavior Outlook Norwegian Developmental Study (BONDS) and the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). Despite some slight differences across the two samples, we found that children from higher social backgrounds are less likely to have language difficulties starting from age 18 months and up to age 8 (grade 2). Moreover, while early language problems are strongly predictive of later language, maternal education makes an additional contribution to explaining language difficulties at the beginning of school life. Social inequality in language development arises early, even in a country like Norway, with low unemployment and one of the most egalitarian societies in Europe.

Do family learning phonics courses improve parents' reading‐related skills and ability to support their children's reading?

BackgroundParents play a crucial role in supporting children's literacy, especially in the first years of school. However, parents can find this challenging if they struggle with reading themselves. We explore whether family learning phonics courses boost parents' reading‐related skills and ability to support their children's reading, in a collaboration between UK academics and the National Family Learning Forum.MethodsPrior to data collection, academics and course leaders identified key skills for courses to target: phonological awareness, letter‐sounds, segmenting and blending, and awareness of irregular words. Family learning teams recruited parents of Reception children (4–5 years old) for the phonics group (N = 50), targeting parents who were likely to need literacy support. Parents received 6 weeks of 1‐ to 2‐hour phonics sessions in groups. Control participants (N = 76) were recruited online and had a Reception‐age child (4–5 years old); controls received no training. All participants completed phonics‐related tests at weeks 1 and 6.ResultsThe phonics group significantly improved on letter‐sound knowledge (by 4.64 letters; 51 total items); the control group did not significantly improve on this measure. Both groups showed some improvement in phonological awareness and word reading (likely due to practice effects), and neither group improved on nonword reading. The reading questionnaire showed that the phonics group reported giving their children more regular support with literacy activities and placed a higher level of importance on homework, with no increase for the control group.ConclusionsWe provide evidence that family learning phonics courses can improve crucial reading skills (letter‐sound knowledge) and increase parents' confidence to support their children's reading. Some reading skills (phonological awareness, whole word reading, and decoding) may be slower to change and require longer term support. Future work should explore long‐term consequences of such courses for parents' and their children's reading habits and skills.