Search results for "educational psychology"
showing 10 items of 1902 documents
Building children’s sense of community in a day care centre through small groups in play
2016
This study examines the process through which children build a sense of community in small groups in a day care centre. The study asks the following: how does children’s sense of community develop, and what are its key features? Data were collected by applying ethnographic methods in a group of three- to five-year-old children over eleven months. The results show that children’s sense of community developed through three stages. In the first stage, it evolved gradually through experiences in joint play. In the second stage, stable friendships were formed and strengthened in play. In the third and final stage, sense of community was fully established and children’s emotional bonding was stro…
Do different routes to becoming a special educator produce different understandings of the profession and its core concepts?
2014
There are multiple routes to becoming a special educator in Norway. In recent years, bachelor's degree programmes have offered an alternative to the traditional path in which special education coursework is taken as a part of teacher education. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether these different programmes produce different understandings of the special education profession and its core concepts. We surveyed 27 bachelor students and 36 teacher education students using open-ended questions concerning their future goals and expectations and the concepts of ‘inclusion,’ ‘learning disability,’ and ‘special educator’. Teacher education students were more likely to: (a) view incl…
Children’s Emotions in Educational Settings: Teacher Perceptions from Australia, China, Finland, Japan and Spain
2019
The transition to formal education is a critical transition in children’s lives that has importance for socio-emotional and behavioral functioning. In the transition process, teachers are key players who work intensively with children and their families. This article focuses on teachers’ perceptions of children´s socio-emotional behavior during the transition from preschool to primary school. We collected qualitative teacher interviews from 112 teachers from five different countries—Australia, China, Finland, Japan and Spain. The research questions were: (1) How do teachers in the five countries perceive children’s abilities in expressing and regulating emotions. (2) How are children’s emot…
Teachers adapt their instruction according to students’ academic performance
2012
This study examined the extent to which a student’s academic performance in first grade contributes to the active instruction given by a teacher to a particular student. To investigate this, 105 first graders were tested in mathematics and reading in the fall and spring of their first school year. At the same time points, their teachers filled in a questionnaire on five successive days on the active instruction they have given a particular student. The results showed that the poorer the performance in reading a student showed in fall, the more active instruction teachers reported giving a student in spring. Moreover, the poorer the performance in mathematics a student showed in fall, the mo…
The Pedagogical Problem: Vygotsky’s Encounter with Marx’s Phenomenal Forms
2016
As advanced at the end of the previous chapter, the present one underscores the need to reassess Karl Marx’s contribution from the standpoint of pedagogy, in order for this field to come to terms with his sophisticated theory of the Erscheinungsformen or phenomenal forms. This analysis seems particularly pertinent in relation to the work of the early-Soviet scholar Lev Vygotsky, who allegedly deployed this concept in his own account of cognitive development in human beings. Indeed, despite the many educational fields that Marx’s work has impacted on—most obviously sociology of education, but also educational psychology, particularly thanks to the theoretical developments made by the author …
Teachers’ Ability to Identify Children at Early Risk for Reading Difficulties in Grade 1
2017
The aim of the study was to investigate what kinds of assessment practices classroom teachers and special educational needs (SEN) teachers use in assessing first grade students' pre-reading skills (letter knowledge and phonological skills). Further, we investigated to what extent teachers were able to identify difficulties in pre-reading skills of the children with the lowest achievement scores. The accuracy of teacher ratings of students' pre-reading skills was studied by comparing teacher ratings to actual test scores. The data from two Finnish longitudinal studies were used: JLD sample (class teachers, n = 91; SEN teachers, n = 51; 200 students) and First Steps sample (class teachers, n …
Task-related variation in communication of mothers and their sons with learning disability
1995
The purpose of the present study was to examine whether mother-child communication patterns vary as a function of the type of the task. Groups of learning disabled (LD=30) and normally achieving boys (NLD=30) were videotaped interacting with their mothers in two different tasks. The children were matched for age (8 to 11 year-olds) and for parent’s SES. The results indicated that the teaching task differentiated the groups more than did the story task. Academic character of the teaching task increased mothers’ task involvement in both groups. Mothers of the LD group showed, however, significantly more dominance and expressed less emotionality while teaching their child. Mothers’ interaction…
Why do boys and girls perform differently on PISA Reading in Finland? The effects of reading fluency, achievement behaviour, leisure reading and home…
2017
The present study examined gender gap in Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) Reading and mediators of the gender gap in a Finnish sample (n = 1,309). We examined whether the gender gap in PISA Reading performance can be understood via the effects of reading fluency, achievement behaviour (mastery orientation and task-avoidant behaviour) or the amount of time spent with leisure reading and homework. Girls outperformed boys in all measures except for achievement behaviour. The models explaining PISA Reading were not different: For boys and girls, reading fluency, mastery orientation, leisure book reading and homework explained the variance in PISA Reading scores. The gender ef…
Reading comprehension, word reading and spelling as predictors of school achievement and choice of secondary education
2008
Abstract The main aim of this study was to find out what kind of factor model of written language skills could be created on the basis of tests of reading accuracy and fluency, spelling and reading comprehension, and how the written language skills factor and school achievement predict choice of secondary education and what effects gender, special education support and socio-economic background have on this prediction. Altogether 1700 students were assessed with two word-level reading tests and word- and pseudo-word-spelling tests and by a reading comprehension test. Remaining data were elicited with a questionnaire. The findings showed that a latent written language skills factor could be …
The role of achievement strategies on literacy acquisition across languages
2011
Abstract We examined the importance of children’s achievement strategies in different literacy outcomes in three languages varying in orthographic consistency: Chinese, English, and Greek. Eighty Chinese-speaking Taiwanese children, 51 English-speaking Canadian children and 70 Greek children were assessed on measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, reading fluency, and spelling. The children’s use of a task-focused versus task-avoidant achievement strategy in the classroom context was rated by their teachers. The results indicated that the teacher-rated task-focused behavior was a significant predictor of spelling and to a lesser extent of reading fluency and that its e…