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Western literature suggests that young children overestimate their performance across a range of tasks. Research in non‐Western cultures, however, is lacking. In 2019, 101 Chinese (52% girls) and 98 Dutch (49% girls) children, ages 4 and 5, were asked to estimate how well they would perform on both a motor and a memory task. Children from both countries overestimated their performance to the same extent (ηp2 =.077 and.027 for the motor and memory tasks, respectively). They generally persevered in doing so despite receiving realistic performance feedback. Yet, children overestimated their peers' performance about as much as their own performance, in some cases even more. This is the first demonstration of performance overestimation in children growing up in a non‐Western culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzed the development of postural control and the cost of the cognitive task on postural control in the bipedal standing position during childhood. Sixty-six normally developed children divided into four groups by age participated in this study. Single (ST) and dual-tasks (DT) were conducted in the bipedal standing position with eyes open. DT included carrying out a cognitive task consisting of a modified Stroop Test. A Wii Balance Board was used to measure postural sway data. The results showed effects of age and condition on postural control (p < 0.01). The interaction of age x condition showed that in DT, 4-year-old children presented higher ellipse area than 5, 6, 7-year-olds (p < 0.01). Moreover, an effect of age on cognitive performance was found (p < 0.001). In conclusion, four-year old children present lower postural control than 5, 6, 7-year-olds. The youngest children gave fewer correct answers than the 6 and 7-year-olds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early reading and writing skills are important in order to develop and succeed, both in school and later on in life. The aim of this study was to shed light on influential factors on children's reading and writing development from the perspective of parents. Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model for human development was adopted as a theoretical framework. The researchers made use of retrospective life-history oriented interviews with 27 parents conducted as part of a larger research project in Sweden. In the interviews, the parents described factors that can be interpreted as being influential. A thematic analysis technique generated nine themes: Child's abilities and engagement; Genetics and parents' abilities; More able siblings and peers; Involved parents and grandparents; Teacher competence, attitude and collaborations; Social climate in preschool and preschool class; Free play and child-initiated reading and writing activities; Toys and books; and Extra support provisions and stimulation. Implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between two-dimensional elements and three-dimensional objects is an abstract process which generates difficulty for learning. This ability can be improved with exercises designed to improve spatial abilities. Many of those exercises aim at offering a single solution with the result that they are not the most suitable for developing creativity. In this article, a preliminary study carried out during the 2016–17 academic year with students of the Masters in Teacher Training is described, where the video game Minecraft was used to conduct the activity 'The house of your dreams'. In this workshop, the aim was to work on three-dimensional space and also incorporate divergent thinking for the improvement of creativity. In order to verify the effectiveness of this new workshop, the results were measured with the TAEC test before and after the experiment. The results obtained show that the activity improves creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many children living in Northern and mountainous regions of the world, playing in snow is enticing and connotes childhood for many adults. Even so, researchers have paid little attention to children's play in/with snow and ice. This paper aims to contribute to the growing knowledge on children's competencies and child-nature relationships by exploring how a group of children build their understanding of themselves and their environment during playful explorations in demanding winter landscapes. The study is framed by (1) a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach, (2) an analysis of selected evocative empirical examples of ways children play in/with winter materials, and (3) perspectives on 'Bildung' as dialectical processes of being-and-becoming. Data were generated through ethnographically inspired fieldwork, including 20 children aged four to six, in a Norwegian Nature Kindergarten, emphasizing children's self-initiated outdoor play as educationally important. The fieldwork was conducted in 2018 during the coldest time of the year and draws on participant observation, children's photographs and on-site conversations. The study is inspired by the work of [Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive. Oxon: Routledge], [Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of perception. London: Routledge], [Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates], and the Continental European philosophy of Bildung [Biesta, G. (2002). Bildung and modernity: The future of Bildung in a world of difference. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 21(4–5), 343–351] and applies Ingold's concepts of 'lines', 'knots' and 'dwelling', to explore children's playful movements and experiences along lines in an ever-evolving meshwork. Three themes are analyzed. First, the ever-transforming qualities of snow and ice are discussed as existential materials and cultural conditions in the children's dialectical process of being-and-becoming. Second, the kindergarten's snow-covered playground is seen as attractive and challenging from the children's perspective. Third, as the children increase their competence in the dynamic winter environment through movement, they embody existential knowledge and skills about the socio-material context of which they are a part. Thus, they familiarize themselves with their environment as being-and-becoming winter children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children used to have wide range of skills to perform any motor activity and they have few adaptive strategies to cope up with the difficult motor task. Few children lack the ability to perform motor activity and they fail to cope up with academic task. Ball catching and throwing is considered to be the familiar sport among the children at primary schools and ball catching task demands a set of complex motor events. Ball catching is a demanding task, which demands a Childs attention, visual feedback, bilateral coordination of hands and legs as well as orientation to the environment. Catching a ball needs an adjustment in hand and leg in relation to the force and speed of the ball approaching from the distance. The presence of marked motor impairment without any medical condition or neurological disorder will diagnose a child as having developmental coordination disorder. Majority of the motor deficit assessment tests includes ball catching skill, to identify and quantify the motor deficit exhibited by the children. We aimed to objectively measure the ball catching skill among children of age band 5-8 years diagnosed with developmental coordination disorder. We scored the performance of the children by visualizing and analyzing the videotaped document of the task repeated and succeeded in several attempts. Outcome measure used in the current study is the number of successful attempts of catching the manually thrown balls from the examiner. This pilot study was planned to be followed up by establishing the reliability and validity in future among children with DCD. However in the current study, we have established the test-retest reliability. Which is good and boys were proved to have good ball catching ability than girls. Current study incorporated 30 trails and further studies are needed to validate the findings of the current pilot study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the Salamanca Statement refers as the basis for the child's right to inclusion (UNESCO). Topics include determines that it embraces diversity by acknowledging difference of child in terms of their aptitudes, capabilities, needs and interests; and considered that the educational systems need to be designed and managed to take account of individual differences.

The current study examines parents' reactions to making social comparisons of their children on school‐related domains. Parents (N = 117; ages 25 to 49; 94% women) of elementary school‐age children (ages 5 to 10; 57.3% girls) were recruited online from Facebook parenting groups and several school districts in Atlantic Canada. Participants were randomly assigned to make either an upward, a downward, or a lateral social comparison about their child's ability in school. Participants reported the time since the event in comparison, their emotional reactions, their evaluations of their child's ability in the domain, and how important they perceived the domain to be for their child's future. Domain importance and evaluations of the child's abilities also were measured prior to making the comparison. Significant differences based on social comparison condition were found for temporal distance, post‐comparison domain importance, and post‐comparison assessments of the child's ability in the domain. The effect of social comparison on post‐comparison domain importance was not mediated by post‐comparison assessments of the child's ability, suggesting a direct effect of comparisons on perceived domain importance. These findings suggest that the act of social comparison caused parents to reevaluate the importance of the domain of comparison and their child's abilities in that domain. Implications for parents and educators are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents advisory statements relating to the optimal age for acquiring swimming and aquatic skills, which have been approved by the American Red Cross Advisory Council on First Aid, Aquatics, Safety, and Prevention (ACFASP). It emphasized that the acquisition of swimming lessons is an inadequate means for preventing drowning among children younger than 4-5 years old. A recommendation for aquatic agencies to restrict children under 5 years old from swimming lessons is also mentioned.

The construct of ability conceptions plays a critical role in children's motivation and achievement behaviors in education, including physical education. Valid and reliable measures of this construct are essential to advance our knowledge of children's ability conceptions and related cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes. From a measurement point of view, this article discusses the construct of ability conceptions from two major theoretical perspectives in terms of differences and commonalities. It also offers insights to further improve the psychometric properties of ability conceptions measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective questioning helps preschoolers to reason verbally during philosophical group discussions. The aim of this study was to identify which researcher's questions preschoolers respond to with verbal reasoning during such discussions. The data were collected through video-recorded group discussions. A total of 1567 questions and 1119 verbal reasons were analysed using mixed-methods. The findings showed that during 20 philosophical group discussions, researchers asked three types of questions: (1) open-ended questions (45.64%) with four functions: Initiating, interpretation, process, and speculative; (2) closed-ended questions (30.5%) with two functions: Yes/No, choice; and (3) off discussion questions (23.86%). Results indicate that the preschoolers yielded proportionally the most verbal reasons at different levels (association based on reality; connection between the words; sense-making explanation) in response to interpretation, process and Yes/No questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides an expanded view of joint attention and its relation to expressive language development. A total of 144 toddlers (40 typically developing, 58 with autism spectrum disorder [ASD], 46 with developmental delay [DD]) participated at 24 and 31 months. Toddlers who screened positive for ASD risk, especially those subsequently diagnosed with ASD, had poorer joint attention skills, joint engagement during parent-toddler interaction, and expressive language. Findings highlight the dynamic relation between joint attention and language development. In the ASD and DD groups, joint engagement predicted later expressive vocabulary, significantly more than predictions based on joint attention skills. Joint engagement was most severely impacted when toddlers did not talk initially and improved markedly if they subsequently began to speak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preterm birth is the leading cause of newborn deaths in almost all countries around the world. Whilst survivors encounter severe motor, cognitive and behavioral impairments during infancy or later in their lives, the studies of the recent years have demonstrated that the social development serving a basis for learning and cognition of the environment in human infants can be severely affected even in normally developing preterm born children (gestational age < 37 weeks). The current article presents a discussion on the behavioral as well as the neuroimaging aspects of the social maturation in preterm and full-term children, depicting complexity of the impairments and focusing on the involved brain structures. Further, authors perform the design of the longitudinal study of social and non-social perception in early childhood, implemented on the base of the Laboratory for Brain and Neurocognitive Development (Ural Federal University). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents summarized results of qualitative studies exploring child development in norm and pathology; studies were conducted within the framework of cultural-historical approach developed by L.S. Vygotsky and A.R. Luria and aimed at further methodological elaboration of the approach. The article demonstrates that such research needs to be multidimensional and to include multilevel analysis; it stresses on the importance of analyzing developmental norms in the context of certain social groups, subcultures, etc. The article explores shaping of developmental risks in certain cultural settings and insists on the significance of understanding developmental deviations in the context of normative developmental matrix approved by this social group. The conducted study demonstrates how this method of assessment allows to evaluate structural peculiarities and inner psychodynamics of developmental deviations more precisely within the reconstructed developmental matrix. Such data structure describing child development in certain social group allows to organize correction of development in a systematic manner as well as to design optimal organization of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Some authors indicate that the origin of gender identity in children is between two and three years old. This research report presents evidence against this affirmation based on Cultural-historical Psychology about the acquisition of consciousness through language as a process that begins from early childhood and ends in adolescence. Objective. (1) Characterize concepts about gender identity that have children in early childhood. (2) To compare differences and similarities of the concept of gender identity in children of different ages. Design. The procedure used was the classifying pictures method adapted for this study. We evaluated 32 children from one to five years old about the acquisition of gender identity through a qualitative analysis of data. Results. It was found that children of two and three years old group images by gender stereotypes, while those of four and five are incorporating other criteria such as shape and color. Conclusion. This happens for two reasons: first, the incorporation of the gender culture is a complex process and second, the school promotes a classification system that allows to order the world based on criteria other than gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Extracurricular activities (EAs) are assumed to benefit young children. • Results from structural equation models confirm an association between EAs and achievement growth in math and reading. • Results do not support the idea that this association is mediated by children's non-cognitive skills. Abstract Extracurricular activities (EAs) are thought to foster the development of a host of non-cognitive skills—persistence, communication, and collaboration, among others—that are presumed to facilitate children's school success. While this logic is intuitively appealing, there have been few formal tests of this idea. This study tests this logic using panel data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Class of 2010–11 (N = 10,422) to assess the extent to which children's involvement in EAs influences the development of their non-cognitive skills and ultimately their achievement growth from the beginning of kindergarten to the end of first grade. Results from structural equation models indicate that increased EA participation is associated with gains in reading and math achievement, but the evidence provides little support for the claim that these associations are mediated by children's non-cognitive skills. Implications for policy makers and school and community-based practitioners are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Much research has investigated children's understanding of others' mental states in terms of beliefs, but far less is known about their understanding of others' desires. To fill this gap, we used an eye-tracking paradigm to test 2-year-old children's desire understanding by measuring their anticipatory looking behavior as well as changes in their internal arousal (i.e., changes in pupil dilation). Children showed increased pupil dilation when an adult reached for an object she had previously emoted negatively towards (the object incongruent with her desire). Children also showed weaker evidence of anticipating that an adult will reach for an object that she had emoted positively towards (the object congruent with her desire). These results suggest that 2-year-olds robustly recognize whether or not an individual's actions are consistent with her desires, and seem to have a budding capacity to predict an individual's actions based on her desires. Thus, by age 2 years, children are on their way to acquiring a robust desire psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although students’ implicit theories about ability are known to predict successful learning and achievement, parents’ implicit theories about ability have received little attention. Thus, we investigated the influence of parents’ theories about ability on their children’s academic achievement and the mechanisms behind this influence. We used a structural equation model to examine data from parents and their fourth-grade children in Germany ( N  = 723). The extent of parents’ incremental theories predicted (a) the extent of children’s incremental theories (β = .41, p  < .001), (b) parental learning-related behaviors (less homework-related conflict, β = −.36, p  < .001, and less controlling behavior, β = −.33, p  < .001), and—partially mediated by these two aspects—(c) their children achieving better grades (β = .20, p  < .001). Thus, parents’ endorsement of an incremental theory appears to increase children’s achievement by reducing unconstructive learning-related parental behaviors and facilitating children’s adoption of an incremental theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial memory is an important aspect of adaptive behavior and experience, providing both content and context to the perceptions and memories that we form in everyday life. Young children’s abilities in this realm shift from mainly egocentric (self-based) to include allocentric (world-based) codings at around 4 years of age. However, information about the cognitive mechanisms underlying acquisition of these new abilities is still lacking. We examined allocentric spatial recall in 4.5- to 8.5-year-olds, looking for continuity with navigation as previously studied in 2- to 4-year-olds and other species. We specifically predicted an advantage for three-dimensional landmarks over two-dimensional ones and for recalling targets “in the middle” versus elsewhere. However, we did not find compelling evidence for either of these effects, and indeed some analyses even support the opposite of each of these conclusions. There were also no significant interactions with age. These findings highlight the incompleteness of our overall theories of the development of spatial cognition in general and allocentric spatial recall in particular. They also suggest that allocentric spatial recall involves processes that have separate behavioral characteristics from other cognitive systems involved in navigation earlier in life and in other species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developmental research beginning in the 1970s has suggested that children’s ability to form cognitive maps reaches adult levels during early adolescence. However, this research has used a variety of testing procedures, often in real-world environments, which have been difficult to share widely across labs and to use to probe components of mapping, individual differences in success, and possible mechanisms of development and reasons for individual variation. In this study, we charted the development of cognitive mapping using a virtual navigation paradigm, Silcton, that allows for testing samples of substantial size in a uniform way and in which adults show marked individual differences in the formation of accurate route representations and/or in route integration. The current study tested children aged between 8 and 16 years. In terms of components of normative development, children’s performance reached adult levels of proficiency at around age 12, but route representation progressed significantly more quickly than route integration. In terms of individual differences, by age 12 children could be grouped into the same three categories evident in adults: imprecise navigators (who form only imprecise ideas of routes), non-integrators (who represent routes more accurately but are imprecise in relating two routes), and integrators (who relate the two routes and, thus, form cognitive maps). Thus, individual differences likely originate during childhood. In terms of correlates, perspective-taking skills predicted navigation performance better than mental rotation skills, in accord with the view that perspective taking operates on extrinsic spatial representations, whereas mental rotation taps intrinsic spatial representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is intense public interest in questions surrounding how children learn to read and how they can best be taught. Research in psychological science has provided answers to many of these questions but, somewhat surprisingly, this research has been slow to make inroads into educational policy and practice. Instead, the field has been plagued by decades of "reading wars." Even now, there remains a wide gap between the state of research knowledge about learning to read and the state of public understanding. The aim of this article is to fill this gap. We present a comprehensive tutorial review of the science of learning to read, spanning from children's earliest alphabetic skills through to the fluent word recognition and skilled text comprehension characteristic of expert readers. We explain why phonics instruction is so central to learning in a writing system such as English. But we also move beyond phonics, reviewing research on what else children need to learn to become expert readers and considering how this might be translated into effective classroom practice. We call for an end to the reading wars and recommend an agenda for instruction and research in reading acquisition that is balanced, developmentally informed, and based on a deep understanding of how language and writing systems work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors investigated children's narrative competence by analyzing the development of the reciprocal relationship between storytelling and story retelling performances over a school year through a cross-lagged panel design. The participants in this study were 170 Italian kindergarten pupils (M age = 4.98 ± 0.31 years). Children were asked to produce oral narratives in two different tasks: a storytelling and a story retelling task. Narrative competence was assessed in terms of structure and coherence. The cross-lagged panel analyses showed that both storytelling and story retelling tasks are stable constructs, but they differ in the emphasis on coherence. Data confirmed the pivotal role played by storytelling as a task, and structure as a component in fostering the development of children's narrative competence. Overall, results from this study suggest that storytelling and story retelling are tasks that involve interrelated but not overlapping processes, and trigger different aspects of narrative competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buildings are responsible of major energy consumption globally. In addition, they are linked to thermal comfort. The need to provide comfort becomes more crucial in schools as they are the place where students learn, and develop their skills. This research aims to investigate the energy responsiveness of new and traditional school building design, where major variation in form, amount of external walls and glazing are different. The research focused on indoor microclimate condition of selected schools in the city of Jeddah where the climate is hot and humid using advanced tools for monitoring. The research uses advanced energy equipment to measure several aspects such as floor temperature, roof temperature, globe temperature and other factors which can lead to predictable thermal comfort of users. The findings suggest that a larger area of glazing shielded from sunlight has a greater influence on both indoor condition and general thermal sensation. The finding also suggests that the glazing ratio is a major contributor on indoor thermal pattern which can result in an increase in temperature profile between from 7-10°C. The findings of this research can assist in the improvement in the design of the prototype school building in hot and humid climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores the narrative abilities demonstrated by children aged between 8 and 12 in the production of television stories. The results reveal that not all television stories viewed by children foster the informal education process. One type of story, termed narrativizing, enables children to produce coherent stories which clearly articulate the causal, temporal and motivational relations, as well as the means-end structures, the proximal relations of the intrigue and the distal relations of the plot. Other television stories, denarrativizing stories, tend to induce disarrangements and incoherence at all structural levels of the stories produced by children. This in turn hampers the development of their narrative abilities, which are necessary to the correct development of narrative thought. These results indicate the need to exercise social control over this latter type of fictional television narrative, to which children are exposed throughout their development within the framework of informal education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the role of spatial scaling and proportional-reasoning skills in children’s number-line estimations. Proportional strategies in number-line estimations might suggest that correlations between number-line knowledge and scaling are driven by proportional thinking. However, analyses of data on spatial scaling, proportional reasoning, counting skills, and number-line knowledge from 5- to 7-year-old children ( N  = 65) showed significant correlations between spatial-scaling performance and number-line knowledge, even after age, counting skills, common method variance, and proportional reasoning were accounted for. Thus, spatial scaling is related to variance in number-line estimations due to mechanisms beyond proportional reasoning. The ability to mentally transform magnitudes may be the additional common underlying process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies of children’s counterfactual reasoning have focused on scenarios in which a single causal event yielded an outcome. However, there are also cases in which an outcome would have occurred even in the absence of its actual cause, because of the presence of a further potential cause. In this study, 128 to 152 children aged 4–9 years reasoned counterfactually about such scenarios, in which there were ‘doubly-determined’ outcomes. The task involved dropping two metal discs down separate runways, each of which was sufficient to knock over a toy pig. One of the runways was shorter than the other, meaning that one of the discs actually knocked over the pig whereas the other always arrived too late to do so. Children were asked whether the pig would have been knocked over in the absence of the first metal disc descending the runway. We found that children could accurately answer such counterfactual questions by 6–7 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This study aims to establish the complex nature of leadership in children’s centres in the UK and to demonstrate the value of system leadership as a vital concept for children’s centre leadership.Design/methodology/approach The study presents a case study of leadership development with 24 leaders of children’s centres across Hertfordshire.Findings The study considers the efficacy of system leadership, including distributed leadership, within this setting. Evaluation of the programme found that the concept of system leadership was appropriate, supportive and validating for leaders of children’s centres; however, the concept needed support with further practical tools and resources.Research limitations/implications The limitation of the study is its specificity to one local authority, and further research will be needed to see how generalisable the findings are.Practical implications The implication of the study is that leaders of children’s centres could be supported to work more effectively with system leadership.Social implications When leaders of children’s centres feel effective, they have enhanced well-being and achieve more outcomes, which in turn enhances the well-being of the children and families that they serve.Originality/value Leadership in children’s centres is an under-researched and under-supported area. This study makes a new contribution to this sector of leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is debate about the abstractness of young children's self-concepts-specifically, whether they include representations of (a) general traits and abilities and (b) the global self. Four studies (N = 176 children aged 4-7) suggested these representations are indeed part of early self-concepts. Studies 1 and 2 reexamined prior evidence that young children cannot represent traits and abilities. The results suggested that children's seemingly immature judgments in previous studies were due to peculiarities of the task context not the inadequacy of children's self-concepts. Similarly, Studies 3 and 4 revealed that, contrary to claims of immaturity in reasoning about the global self, young children update their global self-evaluations in flexible, context-sensitive ways. This evidence suggests continuity in the structure of self-concepts across childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]