Young Children's Knowledge Research Articles

Reliability and Validity Evidence for an Adapted Affect Knowledge Test for Preschool Children Using Rasch Theory

ABSTRACT Research Findings: Emotion knowledge is one facet of social and emotional learning (SEL) that emerges in early childhood. Various interventions and measures target preschoolers’ emotional skills to bolster these foundational competencies prior to formal schooling. One measure of emotion knowledge specifically with preschool children is the Affect Knowledge Test (AKT). Despite decades of use and adaptations for different modalities and populations of preschoolers, no study has previously examined the psychometric properties of independent items on the AKT. This study utilized Rasch procedures to analyze how items on the AKT function across a sample of 193 preschoolers (mean age = 49.7 months). Analyses revealed that a unidimensional Rasch model fit well to the item data. Age was a significant predictor of affect knowledge, with older children having increased affect knowledge scores. Results support previous findings of a ceiling effect for older children. Practice and Policy: Our study adds to the empirical understanding of the AKT and its use as a tool to measure emotion knowledge in young children. The children’s scores on the AKT had adequate reliability, supporting the use of AKT for low stakes research-based purposes.

Pediatricians’ Awareness and Knowledge of Young Children’s Oral Health: A Cross Sectional Study

Background: Most childhood oral diseases can be prevented, and the indispensable role of pediatricians in childcare uniquely positions them to champion standard oral and dental healthcare for children. This study aimed to evaluate the knowledge, attitudes, and awareness of pediatricians regarding early childhood caries (ECC), oral health, and the treatment needs of their young patients. Subject & Methods: A total of 449 pediatricians were randomly shared in an online self-reported cross-sectional survey which covered personal details, their approach to pediatric dentistry, and their knowledge of oral health. Results: Importantly, 67.9% of surveyed pediatricians recognized the significance of pediatric dentistry, and 88.9% reported conducting regular oral examinations. However, only 22.3% demonstrated familiarity with ECC, and a mere 5.6% acknowledged the cariogenic nature of medicated syrups. All pediatricians who participated in this study did not advise bottle feeding, nearly 91.75% of the pediatricians could relate the importance of breastfeeding and oral health, 60.1% of pediatricians reported that health education should be given to mothers about nursing caries starting early in life. Conclusion: The study highlights a notable deficiency in the surveyed pediatricians' knowledge concerning ECC, oral health, and the dental treatment needs of children. The identified knowledge gaps emphasize the imperative for pediatricians to enhance their understanding by staying current with recent recommendations. Continuous education initiatives, workshops, or other professional development avenues are essential for pediatricians to address these deficiencies effectively, enabling them to contribute significantly to the standardization of oral and dental healthcare for children and ultimately promoting improved overall health outcomes.

Disaster Education for Young Children: A Systematic Review and Thematic Analysis

The aim of this systematic review is to search for, gather, and synthesize studies on disaster education for children in the early childhood period. Studies that implemented and evaluated the results of a disaster education program for children aged 3 to 6 years old were examined. For the purpose of this study, the focus was on disasters caused by nature induced hazards (earthquake, wildfire, tsunami, flood, volcano eruption, storm, avalanche, tornado, landslide, hurricane, blizzard). A large number of diverse databases such as Emerald, ERIC, JSTOR, ProQuest, SAGE Journals Online, Science Direct, Scopus, SpringerLink, Taylor & Francis Online Journals, Web of Science, Wiley Online Library were searched using a wide range of keywords, resulting in the identification of seven studies from peer-reviewed journals. These studies were examined through thematic analysis. The results highlight the different strategies and materials that researchers utilized for teaching young children about disasters, as well as the various evaluation methods used to assess young children's disaster-related knowledge. Furthermore, it was found that across all examined studies, there was a positive impact of disaster education on children’s disaster related knowledge. It is hoped that this review will shed light on an underrated yet crucial research area, attracting more attention and providing a starting point for rapid improvement

Latine Caregivers’ Approaches to Engaging Young Children in Mathematics

Young children's mathematical knowledge develops in the context of relationships with important caregivers as they engage in everyday activities and routines. The purpose of this study was to document how Latine families define mathematics and discuss using math in their everyday lives. Seventy-one primary caregivers of Latine heritage with preschool-aged children were asked to define mathematics, share how they use mathematics in a regular day, and describe how mathematics is present in the lives of their children. A k-means cluster analysis on emergent dimensions showed three main constellations of caregivers that differed in the number of math concepts mentioned, family-centered uses of math, and attitudes towards math. Findings offer insights into how Latine families understand and think about mathematics in the lives of their young children and suggest ways to approach the development of family math interventions.

Making Mistakes: Children's Errors as Opportunities for Emergent Literacy Learning in Early Childhood

AbstractErrors are essential for emergent literacy learning because they reveal the gaps in young children's knowledge. The ways in which teachers respond to these errors can have important implications for children's knowledge building; yet, there is limited information for teachers about how to effectively respond to children's errors in emergent literacy contexts. In this article, we describe a framework grounded in research and theory for responding to children's errors. We describe a two‐step process for acknowledging and responding to children's errors along with specific error‐handling practices, and illustrate the application of this framework using real‐world, data‐driven examples. We also provide recommendations for creating a classroom environment that challenges children, builds their confidence as learners, and welcomes their errors. This article will equip teachers with practical guidance for leveraging preschool‐age (i.e., 3–5 years) children's errors as opportunities for enhancing emergent literacy learning.

“I did it wrong, but i know it”: Young children's metacognitive knowledge expressions during peer interactions in math activities

Previous studies reveal that children's metacognitive skills make massive progress during the early childhood period. We believe that examining how children use metacognitive skills in the learning process is crucial for shaping future learning experiences. This case study explores how children's metacognitive knowledge emerges through peer interactions in mathematical measurement activities. Sixteen activities based on the dimensions of mathematical measurement skills of length, area, weight, and volume were applied and video recorded. We systematically observed two 5-year-old children in these activities for 10 weeks. A framework of analysis was developed from the results of previous research on children's metacognition. Children's metacognitive knowledge was analyzed in mathematical statements and other variables were also extracted. Using qualitative analysis, this study indicates how children's mathematical thinking skills are reflected in their expressions of metacognitive knowledge during peer interactions. Difficulties in assessing and measuring children's metacognition are also discussed.

The feeling thinking talking intervention with teachers advances young children's emotion knowledge

AbstractBecause emotion knowledge and language skills each contribute to children's success in school and life, the Feeling Thinking Talking (FTT) intervention combines the advancement of language skills and of emotion knowledge in teachers’ child‐directed conversations. Teachers from centers of early childhood education in Germany were taught language support strategies (LSS) and how to apply them during emotion talk while reading picture books, while reminiscing about emotional events, and in everyday conversations with the children in their care. The evaluation of the FTT intervention entailed a comparison between the FTT group (N = 43) and a business‐as‐usual (BAU) control group (N = 67) with N = 110 children (Mage = 49.41 months, range = 33–66 months at T1) who were individually tested using objective tests on receptive vocabulary and emotion knowledge before (T1) and after the FTT intervention (T2), and in a follow‐up 3–6 months later (T3). After a multiple imputation procedure, mixed multilevel models indicated that the children taught by the FTT group teachers made faster progress in their emotion knowledge than their agemates in the BAU condition, especially in their knowledge of mixed emotions, when numerous covariates were controlled. Results suggest that young children's emotion knowledge can be promoted alongside with language skills by a teacher‐led intervention supporting child‐directed emotion talk in early childhood education. Discussion focuses on emotion talk as the mechanism for the transmission of emotion knowledge.

Investigation and Research on the Current Situation of Children's Sexual Knowledge Education ——Taking Liupanshui City as an Example

In the past, sex education was only popularized and educated in primary and secondary schools and universities, and there was very little education on sexual knowledge of young children. Through the literature analysis, the research understands the current situation of children's sexual knowledge education in my country, and through interviews and distribution of questionnaires, to understand the educational concepts, attitudes and knowledge of educators. For the problems in targeted knowledge education, the following suggestions are put forward: First, educators should establish a correct view of sex education. Second, set up specialized institutions for early childhood sexuality education to promote the improvement and improvement of educators' ability to educate young children's sexuality knowledge, and further promote the professionalization of early childhood sexuality education courses for educators. Thirdly, strengthen the cooperation of homeland and jointly promote the development of sex knowledge education. Fourth, educators should carry out early childhood sexuality education in various ways.

Moving to The Beats: The Effect of Dance Education on Early Self-Regulation

Self-regulation in children is an important thing that needs to be prepared from an early age. Besides affecting children's school readiness, this also makes it easier for children to have good academic achievements. This study aims to determine the influence of moving to the beat of early childhood self-regulation. This research was conducted on kindergarten group B students in East Jakarta. The research method used is a quasi-experiment method with a sample of 20 students. The data collection technique uses observations by analysing paired t-test statistical data. The results of the study explained that there was a significant effect of moving to the beat of early childhood self-regulation. The significance level is 0.000 < 0.05, which means that H0 is rejected and H1 is accepted, this indicates a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test. For further research, it is recommended to look at the influence of other factors on early childhood self-regulation.
 Keywords: Beats, Early childhood, Moving, Self-Regulation

"The soup and the spoon": Young children's (3-7 years) contextual knowledge in the food domain and links with food neophobia and picky/fussy.

"The soup and the spoon": Young children's (3-7 years) contextual knowledge in the food domain and links with food neophobia and picky/fussy.

Funds of knowledge and agentic strategies of three- and four-year-old children in South Africa

In South Africa, little is known about the funds of knowledge of young children, and how they use this resource to affirm their agency in early childhood centres to build their childhood experiences. With this article we contribute knowledge through exploring the strategies that young children use to show their agency and thereby their funds of knowledge in a marginalised context. The funds of knowledge approach is helpful for illuminating meaning-making endeavours that foreground agentic actions that are imaginative, creative and beyond normative expectations. The study reported on in this article was conducted in Bloemfontein, South Africa, at 4 early childhood centres. Data were obtained through observation of 30 three- and 4-year-old children. The findings suggest that young children engage in agentic strategies of avoiding, ignoring and challenging adult control, pretend-play, imitation of adults and peers, and gendered negotiations, as efforts to contest a largely teacher-controlled environment. The insights from this study contribute to the understanding of the kinds of practices in which young children routinely engage, but which are often disregarded and undervalued by teachers. The agentic imagery of children, together with intersections of other imagery, needs to be part of the knowledge mix to inform teacher development and policy on early childhood care and education of children between birth and 4 years old in South Africa.

The development of Chinese character reading and knowledge in young children

Early reading and literacy are critical for helping children to become good readers, and character reading and knowledge are important aspects. However, few studies have investigated this issue. By drawing on 127 children between 4 and 6 years of age from five Level 1 kindergartens in Shanghai, this study examined the development of Chinese character reading and knowledge in young children. Character reading was assessed using the revised Chinese Communicative Development Inventory. Children’s knowledge of Chinese characters was administered through three tasks, namely stroke-pattern recognition, visual memorization and component detection, and component positioning. Results indicated that children acquired some characters before formally learning to read and write. Both character reading and knowledge developed rapidly with age. Further, children’s knowledge of Chinese characters was closely associated with their character reading. Findings suggest that children’s interest and knowledge of characters should be fostered during the early years to prepare them to be successful readers.

Young children's knowledge of fair sharing as an informal basis for understanding division: A latent profile analysis

This study examined patterns of individual differences in young children's early understanding of division. Two hundred and thirty-seven 5- and 6-year-old children completed division tasks that assessed their understanding of the direct and inverse relations in division in two different situations – partitive and quotitive. Two main results emerged from our latent profile analyses. First, all children who had good performance in the inverse-relation problems also performed well in the direct-relation problems, but the converse was not true. Second, all children who performed well in the inverse-relation problems in quotitive situations also performed well in the inverse-relation problems in partitive situations, but not vice versa. The findings highlight the importance of situations in determining children's success in recognizing the inverse relation in division. Several theoretical implications for the development of children's division concepts and educational implications for assessment and teaching are discussed.

Young Children's Food-Related Knowledge: Kindergartners’ Free Categorization of Food Items

ObjectiveStudies concerning young children's food-related knowledge have dealt mostly with specific types of knowledge or with researchers’ predetermined categories. This approach may neglect certain aspects of children's knowledge and may limit the understanding of its general structure. The present study aimed to examine and analyze a wide scope of young children's constructed food-related knowledge. MethodsQualitative thematic analysis of 40 kindergartners’ free categorizations of food items. ResultsChildren's food-related knowledge was broad and derived from 3 primary sources: personal experience, environmental experience, and perceived messages. Novel aspects of knowledge were found, such as different treatments of food and partial familiarity with nutrients. Conclusions and ImplicationsThe findings demonstrated the existence of various types of young children's food-related knowledge. Attention to the broad spectrum of their knowledge and its possible sources may contribute to the design of relevant and effective nutrition education interventions aimed at young children.

Financial strain, maternal attributions, emotion knowledge and children's behavioral readiness for school

In this research, we applied the family stress model to examine maternal hostile attribution bias and emotion situation knowledge as mediators linking family financial strain and children's behavioral readiness for school in a sample of affluent mothers and preschoolers (63 boys). The sample was diverse with regard to race, but the majority of the children were White. Using serial mediational analyses conducted by PROCESS, results indicated that the associations between perceived family financial strain and low levels of social competence and high levels of internalizing behavior were mediated by maternal hostile attributions and lowered child emotion situation knowledge. We discuss the impact of perceived financial strain on parental cognitions and young children's emotion knowledge and behavioral readiness for formal schooling and offer directions for future research and implications for interventions.

Emotion Knowledge, Theory of Mind, and Language in Young Children: Testing a Comprehensive Conceptual Model.

Numerous studies suggest that both emotion knowledge and language abilities are powerfully related to young children’s theory of mind. Nonetheless, the magnitude and direction of the associations between language, emotion knowledge, and theory-of-mind performance in the first years of life are still debated. Hence, the aim of this study was to assess the direct effects of emotion knowledge and language on theory-of-mind scores in 2- and 3-year-old children. A sample of 139 children, aged between 24 and 47 months (M = 35.5 months; SD = 6.73), were directly administered measures of emotion knowledge, theory of mind, and language. We conducted structural equation modeling (SEM) to evaluate the effects of these variables within a single comprehensive framework, while also controlling for any effects of age and gender. The proposed structural equation model provided an excellent fit for the data, indicating that both children’s emotion knowledge, and their language ability had direct positive effects on theory of mind scores. In addition, age was found to wield statistically significant effects on all the variables under study, whereas gender was not significantly associated with any of them. These findings suggest the importance of fostering young children’s emotion knowledge and language ability with a view to enhancing their comprehension of mental states.

Virtuous testimonial belief in young children

I lay out the challenge posed by testimonial knowledge in young children to virtue reliabilist accounts of knowledge. In particular, I examine accounts from Greco and Pritchard and argue that those accounts are too demanding. More specifically, I make the case that young children can have testimonial knowledge without meeting the ability requirements claimed by Greco and Pritchard. As a virtue theoretic alternative, I argue that an agent’s belief must be epistemically virtuous, but that this may sometimes involve belief from a trait rather than an ability.

Quality of Interactions by Early Childhood Educators Following a Language-Specific Professional Learning Program

Children’s language learning is shaped through the social contexts of children’s earliest experiences at home and in early childhood education settings with responsive caregivers. Facilitating high-quality interactions between early childhood educators and children affords opportunities to foster language rich exchanges and promote strong language skills. The present study investigated the impact of a language-specific professional learning program on the quality of educator-child interactions and the associated short-term effects on vocabulary knowledge in young children. Educator practice was compared across 38 early childhood education and care services (19 participated in professional learning and 19 were a comparison group). After the professional learning program, significant differences were observed in the instructional quality in services where educators had participated in the Learning Language and Loving It™ program compared to those services who had not. More than one educator in a room participating in the professional learning was associated with higher instructional quality, educator qualifications were not associated with higher quality. We conclude that discipline-specific knowledge and individual coaching of teaching strategies enabled an increase in the quality of educator’s interactions with young children. No differences were detected in children’s vocabulary knowledge between the professional learning and comparison groups following the LLLI program. This finding is discussed with respect to minimum levels of instructional support required to impact children’s development. Quality improvement programs need to engage with early childhood education services regularly and over sustained periods to ensure the quality of educator interactions reaches levels that impact on children’s outcomes.

Theorising young children's interests: making connections and in-the-moment happenings

Abstract Global perspectives of early childhood education are increasingly mediated by an instrumental discourse associated with standardised notions of knowledge acquisition. However, an alternative discourse for early childhood emphasises the importance of learning experiences that are responsive to the diverse interests that children enact in their play. In this article I argue that instrumentalism reproduces binary conceptualisations of knowledge through which curriculum content privileges universal forms of knowledge over the locally situated knowledge which is mediated by children's interactions and intra-actions within fluid and overlapping social, cultural and material contexts. Drawing upon an episode of play from an early years classroom in England, this paper explores three different ways in which the notion of ‘interest’ can be conceptualised and positioned in relation to young children's learning, knowledge and ways of knowing. In so doing, the paper poses critical questions regarding ‘what counts’ as valid knowledge and as legitimate modes of becoming knowledgeable. I suggest that interests are constituted by a combination of children's intentional motivations to make connections with sociocultural repertoires and the unpredictable, in-the-moment happenings that emerge through intra-activity in early childhood learning environments.

Evaluating the Impact of Teacher-designed, Wellbeing and Sustainability Play-based Learning Experiences on Young Children's Knowledge Connections: A Randomised Trial

THIS PAPER REPORTS FINDINGS from a randomised investigation into the effect of teacher-designed, play-based learning experiences on preschool-aged children's knowledge connections between healthy eating and active play as wellbeing concepts, and sustainability. The investigation used a ‘ funds of knowledge’ theoretical framework to situate young children's interests in digital media and popular culture, as a site for learning these knowledge connections. The findings suggest that the intervention group children created more wellbeing and sustainability knowledge connections than the waitlist control group children. Additionally, the intervention group children demonstrated an increase in vegetable serves and a decrease in unhealthy food servings post intervention (measured by parent report). The paper suggests that more attention should be paid to early childhood teachers’ capacity for actively building children's knowledge about wellbeing and sustainability concepts through play-based learning, as opposed to top-down approaches towards obesity education and prevention alone.