Developmental dynamics between mathematical performance,task motivation,and teachers' goals during the transition to primary school

Background. It has been suggested that children's learning motivation and interest in a particular subject play an important role in their school performance, particularly in mathematics. However, few cross‐lagged longitudinal studies have been carried out to investigate the prospective relationships between academic achievement and task motivation. Moreover, the role that the classroom context plays in this development is largely unknown. Aims. The aim of the study was to investigate the developmental dynamics of maths‐related motivation and mathematical performance during children's transition to primary school. The role of teachers' pedagogical goals and classroom characteristics on this development was also investigated. Sample. A total of 196 Finnish children were examined four times: (0) in October during their preschool year; (1) in October and (2) April during their first grade of primary school; and (3) in October during their second grade. Method. Children's mathematical performance was tested at each measurement point. Task motivation was examined at measurement points 2, 3, and 4 using the Task‐value scale for children. First‐grade teachers were interviewed in November about their pedagogical goals and classroom characteristics. Results and conclusions. The results showed that children's mathematical performance and related task motivation formed a cumulative developmental cycle: a high level of maths performance at the beginning of the first grade increased subsequent task motivation towards mathematics, which further predicted a high level of maths performance at the beginning of the second grade. The level of maths‐related task motivation increased in those classrooms where the teachers emphasized motivation or self‐concept development as their most important pedagogical goal.     

Risky visuomotor choices during rapid reaching in childhood

Many everyday actions are implicit gambles because imprecisions in our visuomotor systems place probabilities on our success or failure. Choosing optimal action strategies involves weighting the costs and gains of potential outcomes by their corresponding probabilities, and requires stable representations of one's own imprecisions. How this ability is acquired during development in childhood when visuomotor skills change drastically is unknown. In a rewarded rapid reaching task, 6‐ to 11‐year‐old children followed ‘risk‐seeking’ strategies leading to overly high point‐loss. Adults' performance, in contrast, was close to optimal. Children's errors were not explained by distorted estimates of value or probability, but may reflect different action selection criteria or immature integration of value and probability information while planning movements. These findings provide a starting point for understanding children's risk‐taking in everyday visuomotor situations when suboptimal choices can be dangerous. Moreover, children's risky visuomotor decisions mirror those reported for non‐motor gambles, raising the possibility that common processes underlie development across decision‐making domains.     

Parent involvement in beginning primary school: Correlates and changes in involvement across the first two years of school in a New Zealand sample

This study described the relations of parents' and teachers' beliefs and attitudes to forms of parents' involvement in children's first two years of primary school. Parents of children in their first year of primary school (age 5) were recruited from 12 classrooms within four schools in New Zealand; 196 families participated in their child's first year, and 124 families continued to participate in their child's second school year. Parents completed the Family-Involvement Questionnaire, New Zealand, and we archivally collected parent-documented children's oral reading homework. Teachers' rated helpfulness of parents' involvement at school (level 2) and parents' rated teacher invitations to be involved and their perceived time and energy (level 1) contributed to school-based involvement in Year 1 in multilevel models, with parents' rated teacher invitations for involvement also found to predict Year 1 home-school communication in regression analyses. Contributors to Year 1 child-parent reading in multilevel models included level 1 predictors of two or more adults in the home and parents' perceived time and energy. Longitudinal analyses suggested both consistency and change in each form of involvement from Year 1 to Year 2, with increases in each form of involvement found to be associated with increases in parents' and/or teachers' views about involvement in Year 2 in cross-sectional time-series analyses. Implications for schools wanting to engage families are that parents' involvement in children's schooling may be influenced by parents' perceptions of their capacity, teachers' engagement efforts, and the school's climate for involvement. This is a special issue paper “Family Engagement in Education and Intervention”.     

Self‐regulated learning of basic arithmetic skills: A longitudinal study

Background. Several studies have examined young primary school children's use of strategies when solving simple addition and subtraction problems. Most of these studies have investigated students’ strategy use as if they were isolated processes. To date, we have little knowledge about how math strategies in young students are related to other important aspects in self‐regulated learning. Aim. The main purpose of this study was to examine relations between young primary school children's basic mathematical skills and their use of math strategies, their metacognitive competence and motivational beliefs, and to investigate how students with basic mathematics skills at various levels differ in respect to the different self‐regulation components. Sample. The participants were comprised of 27 Year 2 students, all from the same class. Method. The data were collected in three stages (autumn Year 2, spring Year 2, and autumn Year 3). The children's arithmetic skills were measured by age relevant tests, while strategy use, metacognitive competence, and motivational beliefs were assessed through individual interviews. The participants were divided into three performance groups; very good students, good students, and not‐so‐good students. Results. Analyses revealed that young primary school children at different levels of basic mathematics skill may differ in several important aspects of self‐regulated learning. Analyses revealed that a good performance in addition and subtraction was related not only to the children's use of advanced mathematics strategies, but also to domain‐specific metacognitive competence, ability attribution for success, effort attribution for failure, and high perceived self‐efficacy when using specific strategies. Conclusions. The results indicate that instructional efforts to facilitate self‐regulated learning of basic arithmetic skills should address cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational aspects of self‐regulation. This is particularly important for low‐performing students.     

Longitudinal causal impacts of preschool teacher training on Ghanaian children’s school readiness: Evidence for persistence and fade‐out

Preschool programs have expanded rapidly in low‐ and middle‐income countries, but there are widespread concerns about whether they are of sufficient quality to promote children's learning and development. We conducted a large school‐randomized control trial (‘Quality Preschool for Ghana’ – QP4G) of a one‐year teacher training and coaching program, with and without parental‐awareness meetings, designed to improve preschool quality and child development. We followed 3,435 children in 240 schools in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, a country with universal pre‐primary education. A previous study reported positive impacts of teacher training (but not teacher training plus parental‐awareness meetings) at the end of the implementation year on some dimensions of classroom quality, teacher well‐being, and children's school readiness (Wolf et al., [2019] Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 12, 10–37). The present study analyzed a new round of data collected 1 year after the end of implementation to assess (a) the extent of persistence in impacts on child development and (b) whether such impacts vary by select child, household, and school characteristics. We found impacts of the teacher training intervention on children's overall school readiness were sustained (d = 0.13), but were only marginally statistically significant. When broken down by domain, impacts on social–emotional skills specifically persisted. Persistent negative effects of teacher training plus parental‐awareness meetings varied by the literacy status of the male parent such that negative impacts were concentrated in children in households with non‐literate male heads.     

Surface similarity and label knowledge impact early numerical comparisons

Previous research has reported that children's numerical equivalence judgments are affected by surface similarity and counting ability (e.g. Mix, Huttenlocher, & Levine, 1996 ; Siegel, 1973 ), a pattern that suggests categorization processes play a role in numerical development. However, because these studies involved memory for sets, large set sizes and counting rather than labelling, the connection between numerical equivalence and non‐numerical comparisons has remained tenuous. The present study sought to replicate these effects while avoiding the problems associated with previous research. Five experiments are presented in which 3‐year‐olds compared various sets in terms of numerical equivalence. As before, children's comparisons were significantly affected by variations in surface similarity, even when there was no memory requirement and sets were small. Also, children with strong label knowledge were more likely to recognize numerical equivalence, especially in low similarity conditions. Still, children performed better when the previous memory and set size demands were eliminated.     

Children's expectations about training the approximate number system

Humans possess a developmentally precocious and evolutionarily ancient approximate number system (ANS) whose sensitivity correlates with uniquely human symbolic arithmetic skills. Recent studies suggest that ANS training improves symbolic arithmetic, but such studies may engender performance expectations in their participants that in turn produce the improvement. Here, we assessed 6‐ to 8‐year‐old children's expectations about the effects of numerical and non‐numerical magnitude training, as well as states of satiety and restfulness, in the context of a study linking children's ANS practice to their improved symbolic arithmetic. We found that children did not expect gains in symbolic arithmetic after exercising the ANS, although they did expect gains in ANS acuity after training on any magnitude task. Moreover, children expected gains in symbolic arithmetic after a good night's sleep and their favourite breakfast. Thus, children's improved symbolic arithmetic after ANS training cannot be explained by their expectations about that training.     

Children prefer to learn from mind‐readers

Kim and Harris ( 2014 , J. Cogn. Dev.) showed that children selectively learned from an informant who produced apparently magical outcomes as compared to another informant who produced only ordinary outcomes in the domain of everyday physics. In the present study, we tested children's ability to differentiate between and selectively learn from informants who displayed either an extraordinary or an ordinary ability in the domain of everyday psychology. Prior studies have shown that children come to appreciate what is ordinarily involved in knowing the private mental states of other people. Drawing on this research, we asked whether 3‐ to 4‐ and 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children preferentially learned from an informant who knew another person's mind via either an ordinary or an extraordinary form of communication. As compared to younger children, older children were more likely to learn from the extraordinary informant. Moreover, children's ability to differentiate between the two informants was a better predictor of their learning from the extraordinary informant than age. We discuss the findings in the light of prior work on selective learning, children's ideas about prayer and their understanding of impossibility.     

Trustworthiness,friendships and self‐control: factors that contribute to young children's school adjustment

The aim of present study was to examine the relationship between young children's peer‐reported trustworthiness and their school adjustment. Two hundred and eleven (103 male and 108 female) children in the United Kingdom (mean age = 6 years 2 months) took part in this study. Measures of peer‐reported trustworthiness, child‐rated school adjustment, and teacher‐rated school adjustment were administered twice across a one‐year period. Also, children's number of friendships, peer acceptance, and self‐control were assessed at Time 2. Multisample path analyses were conducted separately by sex. For both samples there were direct longitudinal paths between peer‐reported trustworthiness and changes in teacher‐rated school adjustment. For boys, the longitudinal path between peer‐reported trustworthiness and changes in child‐rated loneliness was mediated by peer acceptance, and peer‐reported trustworthiness mediated the relationship between self‐control and teacher‐rated school adjustment. Sex differences in peer‐reported trustworthiness also emerged: girls were rated as more trustworthy by their peers than were boys. The findings support the hypothesis that young children's trustworthiness contributes to school adjustment, which is due in part to peer acceptance. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intergenerational associations in numerical approximation and mathematical abilities

Although growing evidence suggests a link between children's math skills and their ability to estimate numerical quantities using the approximate number system (ANS), little is known about the sources underlying individual differences in ANS acuity and their relation with specific mathematical skills. To examine the role of intergenerational transmission of these abilities from parents to children, the current study assessed the ANS acuities and math abilities of 54 children (5–8 years old) and their parents, as well as parents' expectations about children's math skills. Children's ANS acuity positively correlated with their parents' ANS acuity, and children's math abilities were predicted by unique combinations of parents' ANS acuity and math ability depending on the specific math skill in question. These findings provide the first evidence of intergenerational transmission of an unlearned, non‐verbal numerical competence and are an important step toward understanding the multifaceted parental influences on children's math abilities.     

Does the cue help? Children's understanding of multiplicative concepts in different problem contexts

Background: Understanding arithmetical principles is a key part of a conceptual understanding of mathematics. However, very little attention has been paid to children's understanding of multiplicative, as compared to additive, principles. Aims: This study investigated(a) children's ability to use commutative and distributive cues to solve multiplication problems, (b) whether their ability to use these cues depends on the problem context, and(c) whether separate mechanisms might underlie children's understanding of commutativity and distributivity. Sample: Twenty‐seven 9‐year‐olds (Year 5) and thirty‐two 10‐year‐olds (Year 6). Methods: Forty‐eight multiplication problems (with a multiple‐choice response format) were presented to children. There were four types of problem: Commutative, Distributive, Combined commutative‐distributive(all preceded by a cue) and No cue problems. Each type of problem was presented in three different contexts: Isomorphism of measures, Area, and Cartesian product. Results: Children demonstrated a good understanding of commutativity but a very poor understanding of distributivity. A common mistake in the distributive problems was to select the number that was one more, or one less, than the answer in the cue. Children's understanding of distributivity (butnot commutativity) seemed to depend on the problem context. Factor analysis suggested that separate factors underlie the ability to solve commutative and distributive problems. Conclusions: Nine‐ and 10‐year‐olds understand commutativity, but are unable to use the distributive principle in multiplication. Their errors suggest that they may confuse some of the principles of multiplication with those of addition. When children do begin to understand the principle of distributivity, they most easily apply it in the context of Isomorphism of measures multiplication problems. The implications for mathematical education are discussed.     

The contribution of logical reasoning to the learning of mathematics in primary school

It has often been claimed that children's mathematical understanding is based on their ability to reason logically, but there is no good evidence for this causal link. We tested the causal hypothesis about logic and mathematical development in two related studies. In a longitudinal study, we showed that (a) 6‐year‐old children's logical abilities and their working memory predict mathematical achievement 16 months later; and (b) logical scores continued to predict mathematical levels after controls for working memory, whereas working memory scores failed to predict the same measure after controls for differences in logical ability. In our second study, we trained a group of children in logical reasoning and found that they made more progress in mathematics than a control group who were not given this training. These studies establish a causal link between logical reasoning and mathematical learning. Much of children's mathematical knowledge is based on their understanding of its underlying logic.     

Preschoolers affect others' reputations through prosocial gossip

Providing evaluative information to others about absent third parties helps them to identify cooperators and avoid cheaters. Here, we show that 5‐year‐olds, but not 3‐year‐olds, reliably engage in such prosocial gossip. In an experimental setting, 5‐year‐old children spontaneously offered relevant reputational information to guide a peer towards a cooperative partner. Three‐year‐old children offered such evaluative information only rarely, although they still showed a willingness to inform in a non‐evaluative manner. A follow‐up study revealed that one component involved in this age difference is children's developing ability to provide justifications. The current results extend previous work on young children's tendency to manage their own reputation by showing that preschoolers also influence others' reputations via gossip.     

Migration Factors in West African Immigrant Parents’ Perceptions of Their Children's Neighborhood Safety

Immigrants make up large proportions of many low‐income neighborhoods, but have been largely ignored in the neighborhood safety literature. We examined perceived safety's association with migration using a six‐item, child‐specific measure of parents’ perceptions of school‐aged (5–12 years of age) children's safety in a sample of 93 West African immigrant parents in New York City. Aims of the study were (a) to identify pre‐migration correlates (e.g., trauma in home countries), (b) to identify migration‐related correlates (e.g., immigration status, time spent separated from children during migration), and (c) to identify pre‐migration and migration correlates that accounted for variance after controlling for non‐migration‐related correlates (e.g., neighborhood crime, parents’ psychological distress). In a linear regression model, children's safety was associated with borough of residence, greater English ability, less emotional distress, less parenting difficulty, and a history of child separation. Parents’ and children's gender, parents’ immigration status, and the number of contacts in the U.S. pre‐migration and pre‐migration trauma were not associated with children's safety. That child separation was positively associated with safety perceptions suggests that the processes that facilitate parent–child separation might be reconceptualized as strengths for transnational families. Integrating migration‐related factors into the discussion of neighborhood safety for immigrant populations allows for more nuanced views of immigrant families’ well‐being in host countries.     

Parents' Estimations of Preschoolers' Number Skills Relate to at‐Home Number‐Related Activity Engagement

According to Hunt's match hypothesis, the accuracy of parents' beliefs about their children's abilities can influence the nature of the early learning experiences they provide. The present study examined the accuracy of parents' beliefs about their preschoolers' number development and relations to parent‐reported frequency of engaging children in number related experiences at home. Parents reported engaging their preschoolers more frequently in conventional numeracy activities, (i.e. counting and identifying numbers) than advanced number‐related activities (e.g. arithmetic) at home, though the frequency of advanced activities increased with the development of children's advanced number skills. Parents were most uncertain about their children's advanced number skills, though they demonstrated an overall tendency to overestimate their children's abilities across number tasks. Increased rates of overestimation and decreased rates of underestimation were associated with increased incidences of advanced activity engagement at home. Thus, results suggest guiding parents to understand their own children's numerical understanding in a wide range of number domains could promote more advanced at‐home number‐related activity engagement. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving executive functions in 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds: Evaluation of a small group intervention in prekindergarten and kindergarten children

Research suggests a central role of executive functions for children's cognitive and social development during preschool years, especially in promoting school readiness. Interventions aiming to improve executive functions are therefore being called for. The present study examined the effect of a small group intervention implemented in kindergarten settings focusing on basic components of executive functions, i.e., working memory, interference control and cognitive flexibility. A total of 135 children enrolled in Swiss prekindergarten (5‐year‐olds) and kindergarten (6‐year‐olds) were involved. Results revealed that the small group intervention promoted gains in all three included components of executive functions: prekindergarten children substantially improved their working memory and cognitive flexibility processes, whereas significant training effects were found for the kindergarten children in interference control. Implications of these findings for early intervention programs and for tailoring preschool curricula are discussed, particularly with respect to children's school readiness. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Attachment and preschool children's understanding of maternal versus non‐maternal psychological states

There is growing evidence that insecurely attached children are less advanced in their social understanding than their secure counterparts. However, attachment may also predict how individual children use their social understanding across different relationships. For instance, the insecure child's social‐cognitive difficulties may be more pronounced when the psychological states of an attachment figure are being considered. In the current study, forty‐eight 4‐ to 5‐year‐old children were asked about their mothers' emotions and false beliefs, as well as those of non‐attachment figures. The Separation Anxiety Test (SAT) was administered to assess children's attachment representations. Children's SAT scores predicted their overall performance on the false belief and causes of emotion tasks, even after controlling for age and verbal ability. More interestingly, however, children with high scores on the Avoidance dimension of the SAT experienced greater difficulty understanding maternal false beliefs relative to those of an unfamiliar adult female. Thus, although attachment insecurity may hinder social‐cognitive development in general, the findings suggest that there are more specific effects as well. Attachment representations that are characterized by high levels of avoidance appear to interfere with children's ability to fully engage their social‐cognitive skills when reasoning about maternal mental states.     

KNOWING ABOUT READING BEFORE READING: PRESCHOOL CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS OF READING

This paper reports findings from an investigation of preschool children's concepts about reading. Three tasks related to several basic ideas about reading were presented to 60 preschool children, ranging in age from three to five years. The first task assessed children's ability to identify oral and silent reading. The number of children who correctly identified both forms of reading increased with age, with almost all five‐year‐olds giving accurate responses. The second task was aimed at establishing children's perceptions of their own reading ability. Only four of the 60 children incorrectly evaluated their own reading ability. The third task investigated children's ability to recognize what it is on a page that is read. Three‐year‐olds were, on the whole, quite unaware of the salient information in books. Even among the five‐year‐olds, who performed significantly better than three‐ and four‐year‐olds on this task, some children's responses indicated an ambiguity about the role of print in reading. Suggestions for adults who guide young children through their early experiences with print are drawn from the findings of this investigation.     

Parents' Emotion‐Related Beliefs,Behaviours, and Skills Predict Children's Recognition of Emotion

Children who are able to recognize others' emotions are successful in a variety of socioemotional domains, yet we know little about how school‐aged children's abilities develop, particularly in the family context. We hypothesized that children develop emotion recognition skill as a function of parents' own emotion‐related beliefs, behaviours, and skills. We examined parents' beliefs about the value of emotion and guidance of children's emotion, parents' emotion labelling and teaching behaviours, and parents' skill in recognizing children's emotions in relation to their school‐aged children's emotion recognition skills. Sixty‐nine parent–child dyads completed questionnaires, participated in dyadic laboratory tasks, and identified their own emotions and emotions felt by the other participant from videotaped segments. Regression analyses indicate that parents' beliefs, behaviours, and skills together account for 37% of the variance in child emotion recognition ability, even after controlling for parent and child expressive clarity. The findings suggest the importance of the family milieu in the development of children's emotion recognition skill in middle childhood and add to accumulating evidence suggesting important age‐related shifts in the relation between parental emotion socialization and child emotional development. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Seven‐Year Follow‐Up Study on Parents' Expectations of Their Children's Further Education

This study examined the role of parents' perceptions of their children's competencies and their educational optimism in forming expectations of their children's further education. A group of parents (N = 352) were asked to estimate the probability of their children's entering gymnasium or vocational school and to assess the child's competencies in the course of primary school years. Parents had crystallized anticipations of their children's further education as early as preschool, and the differences bound to parents' education and child's gender were well established in their expectations. By the end of the 7^th school year, the relationships between the expectations and the competence assessments strengthened and became more uniform among parents, although there were also group‐specific profiles.