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Early Childhood Curiosity and Kindergarten Reading and Math Academic Achievement
Abstract
Background:
Although children's curiosity is thought to be important for early learning, the association of curiosity with early academic achievement has not been tested. We hypothesized that greater curiosity would be associated with greater kindergarten academic achievement in reading and math.
Methods:
Sample included 6200 children in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort. Measures at kindergarten included direct assessments of reading and math, and a parent-report behavioral questionnaire from which we derived measures of curiosity and effortful control. Multivariate linear regression examined associations of curiosity with kindergarten reading and math academic achievement, adjusting for effortful control and confounders. We also tested for moderation by effortful control, sex, and socioeconomic status (SES).
Results:
In adjusted models, greater curiosity was associated with greater kindergarten reading and math academic achievement: breading = 0.11, p < 0.001; bmath = 0.12, p < 0.001. This association was not moderated by effortful control or sex, but was moderated by SES (preading = 0.01; pmath = 0.005). The association of curiosity with academic achievement was greater for children with low SES (breading = 0.18, p < 0.001; bmath = 0.20, p < 0.001), versus high SES (breading = 0.08, p = 0.004; bmath = 0.07, p < 0.001).
Conclusions:
Curiosity may be an important, yet under-recognized contributor to academic achievement. Fostering curiosity may optimize academic achievement at kindergarten, especially for children with low SES.
Supplementary resource (1)
Data
April 2018
... In our prior work, using data from a nationally representative sample of 6,200 children from the United States, we examined the association between parent-reported curiosity and kindergarten academic achievement. We found a positive association between higher curiosity and higher academic achievement in reading and math at kindergarten, with a greater magnitude of benefit for children with socioeconomic disadvantage (Shah et al., 2018). Our results demonstrated that while higher curiosity was associated with higher academic achievement in all children, low-income children with higher curiosity demonstrated the greatest gains in academic achievement, with the achievement gap between high and low-income children essentially eliminated at high levels of early childhood curiosity. ...
... Relatedly, in our previous work, we observed an "achievement gap" in low-income children who were rated as having lower parent-reported curiosity (Shah et al., 2018). One potential explanation for these findings is that children from under resourced environments may prioritize safety over exploration, which can contribute to the observed achievement gap compared to their more-curious peers . ...
... Building on our previous work which identified an association between higher early childhood curiosity and higher academic achievement, with a greater magnitude of effect in low-income children (Shah et al., 2018), we identified several ecological contexts in early childhood (i.e., the proximal contexts of the home environment and parenting quality and the distal context of neighborhood safety) associated with higher curiosity in under-resourced children. Our results identify several areas that can serve as potential targets of intervention to foster early childhood curiosity. ...
Introduction
Curiosity is an important social-emotional process underlying early learning. Our previous work found a positive association between higher curiosity and higher academic achievement at kindergarten, with a greater magnitude of benefit for children with socioeconomic disadvantage. Because characteristics of the early caregiving and physical environment impact the processes that underlie early learning, we sought to examine early environmental experiences associated with early childhood curiosity, in hopes of identifying modifiable contexts that may promote its expression.
Methods
Using data from a nationally representative sample of 4,750 children from the United States, this study examined the association of multi-level ecological contexts (i.e., neighborhood safety, parenting quality, home environment, and center-based preschool enrollment) on early childhood curiosity at kindergarten, and tested for moderation by socioeconomic status.
Results
In adjusted, stratified models, children from lower-resourced environments (characterized by the lowest-SES tertile) manifested higher curiosity if they experienced more positive parenting, higher quality home environments, and if they lived in “very safe” neighborhoods.
Discussion
We discuss the ecological contexts (i.e., parenting, home, and neighborhood environments) that are promotive of early childhood curiosity, with an emphasis on the role of the neighborhood safety and the “neighborhood built environment” as important modifiable contexts to foster early childhood curiosity in lower-resourced families.
... For example, school enjoyment at age 6 is associated with cross-discipline achievement 10 years later (Morris et al., 2021). School enjoyment is related to the affective components of curiosity, including "liking" or "enjoying" trying new things, which are associated with school readiness and learning (Lamnina & Chase, 2019;Litman, 2008;Shah et al., 2018), perhaps through promoting curiosity and higher engagement in more meaningful learning experiences, such as using constructive cognitive practices like making connections to material (both personal connections and across topics) or identifying gaps in one's knowledge and asking related questions (Chi & Wylie, 2014;Jirout, 2020;Jirout et al., 2018). More generally, Sidi et al. (2018) found that positive affect was associated with better cognitive processing. ...
... Preschool provides important educational experiences that can determine the starting point for students' academic trajectories (Ansari et al., 2021), including early attitudes about school and learning that are associated with later academic outcomes (Aunola et al., 2006;Morris et al., 2021). Research indicates the importance of both enjoyment and general knowledge for school readiness and learning (Grissmer et al., 2010;Shah et al., 2018). We extend prior work by exploring the developmental patterns in these constructs over time, further exploring bidirectional associations between school enjoyment and learning by using cross-lagged panel models, with specific methodological strengths of including a large and diverse sample, as well as studying a developmental period that is critically important for academic learning and a domain that is understudied in past research. ...
... Children perceive a disconnect between school and being curious by late elementary school, reporting lower relevance and enjoyment of learning related to curiosity (Post & Walma van der Molen, 2018. Our observed positive associations between school enjoyment and general knowledge are consistent with those observed between curiosity and knowledge (Wade & Kidd, 2019), and we suggest that future research should explore whether supporting school enjoyment could support curiosity and learning (Lamnina & Chase, 2019;Shah et al., 2018) with the potential of long-term benefits for motivation and learning, especially for science (Gottfried et al., 2016). ...
Learning environments can support the development of foundational knowledge and promote children's attitudes toward learning and school. This study explores the relation between school enjoyment and general knowledge from preschool (2016–2017) to kindergarten (2017–2018) in 1359 children (Mage = 55, 61 months, female = 50%; 58.5% Hispanic, 17% Black, 10% Asian, 10% White, 5% multiracial/other; linguistically diverse). Cross‐lagged panel models showed significant bidirectional associations between preschool enjoyment and change in general knowledge from preschool to kindergarten with a standardized coefficient of β = .21 (p < .001) and associations between preschool general knowledge and change in enjoyment, β = .09 (p = .015). Exploratory analyses with teacher characteristics and demographic subgroup comparisons are discussed. These associations suggest the potential intervention strategy of promoting early school enjoyment to support broader academic development.
... Higher curiosity has been associated with numerous adaptive outcomes in childhood including more robust word acquisition [6], enhanced learning and exploration [7] and higher academic achievement [8,9], highlighting the potential importance of fostering curiosity from an early age. Our previous work found a positive association between higher curiosity and higher academic achievement, with a greater magnitude of benefit for children with socioeconomic disadvantage [10], raising the possibility that promoting curiosity in young children may be one way to mitigate the achievement gap associated with poverty [11]. To foster curiosity in early childhood, it is necessary to consider the modifiable contexts that may promote or inhibit its expression. ...
... A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to assure reliability and to calculate the appropriate loading values for deriving our curiosity factor. Standardized scoring of the curiosity factor was conducted, and good internal consistency was demonstrated (α = 0.70, M = 0.07, SD = 1.2) [10]. Individual question items, loading coefficients, and model fit indices for our curiosity factor are shown in S3 Appendix. ...
... There is some evidence suggesting that children with low curiosity fail engage with their environments in ways that foster motivation, achievement, and more specifically, academic development [46]. Building on our previous work which suggested that higher curiosity can help narrow the achievement gap associated with poverty [10], our results suggest that one potential way to foster curiosity is through facilitating conversational exchanges between children and their parents around moments of shared activity, especially for children from low socioeconomic environments. This aligns with previous language-related research which demonstrates that socioeconomically disadvantaged children preferentially benefit from greater childdirected speech and conversational exchanges [27,45,47,48]. ...
Objective
To examine the main and interactive effects of the amount of daily television exposure and frequency of parent conversation during shared television viewing on parent ratings of curiosity at kindergarten, and to test for moderation by socioeconomic status (SES).
Study design
Sample included 5100 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort. Hours of daily television exposure and frequency of parent screen-time conversation were assessed from a parent interview at preschool, and the outcome of early childhood curiosity was derived from a child behavior questionnaire at kindergarten. Multivariate linear regression examined the main and interactive effects of television exposure and parent screen-time conversation on kindergarten curiosity and tested for moderation by SES.
Results
In adjusted models, greater number of hours of daily television viewing at preschool was associated with lower curiosity at kindergarten (B = -0.14, p = .008). More frequent parent conversation during shared screen-time was associated with higher parent-reported curiosity at kindergarten with evidence of moderation by SES. The magnitude of association between frequency of parent conversation during television viewing and curiosity was greater for children from low SES environments, compared to children from high SES environments: (SES ≤ median): B = 0.29, p < .001; (SES > median): B = 0.11, p < .001.
Conclusions
Higher curiosity at kindergarten was associated with greater frequency of parent conversation during shared television viewing, with a greater magnitude of association in low-SES families. While the study could not include measures of television program content, digital media use and non-screen time conversation, our results suggest the importance of parent conversation to promote early childhood curiosity, especially for children with socioeconomic disadvantage.
... Researchers have studied the connection between curiosity and more tangible definitions of success, such as academic achievement for children and adolescents, and workplace success for adults in the professional world. One study was conducted by Shah et al. (2018), demonstrating a connection between higher childhood curiosity and higher academic achievement in kindergarten reading and math. They concluded that curiosity may be an important, yet under-recognized contributor to academic achievement, and that fostering curiosity may optimize academic achievement in kindergarten, especially for children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds (Shah et al., 2018). ...
... One study was conducted by Shah et al. (2018), demonstrating a connection between higher childhood curiosity and higher academic achievement in kindergarten reading and math. They concluded that curiosity may be an important, yet under-recognized contributor to academic achievement, and that fostering curiosity may optimize academic achievement in kindergarten, especially for children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds (Shah et al., 2018). In another study of Chinese high school students, curiosity was linked to higher academic performance on standardized tests (Wavo, 2004). ...
... George Loewenstein's (1994) seminal paper combined ideas from Gestalt psychology, social psychology, and behavioral decision theory to form an "information-gap theory" about curiosity: curiosity arises when attention becomes focused on a gap in one's knowledge. In studying childhood curiosity, Prachi Shah et al. (2018) characterized curiosity as "the joy of discovery and the motivation to seek information". Is there one conclusive answer? ...
Curiosity is a universal and malleable positive character strength. It has been linked to physical, social, emotional, and psychological well-being, academic success, and success in adulthood. Curiosity is especially important in early childhood because this is a critical stage of development when children’s curiosity is still abundant and organic. But for all its value, curiosity remains under-recognized and under-studied. There is no universally agreed upon definition of curiosity in adults or children. As a result, the research community has varying opinions on how to define, measure, and enhance curiosity. And in many current day classrooms, an overly rigid top-down structure contributes to a disconcerting trend of diminishing curiosity as children grow older. Reviewing the scientific research across various fields, I describe seven psychological constructs (attention, novelty, solitude, inquiry, exploration, surprise, and awe) that can foster curiosity behaviors. I designed a Curiosity Toy Kit incorporating these seven curiosity components to be used as positive interventions for enhancing curiosity in early childhood, when children are 5-6 years old and entering formal education. Adults can use the Curiosity Toy Kit to encourage children to develop positive curiosity behaviors, helping them to flourish in school and beyond.
... Curiosity, the human drive/motive for knowledge or information (Kidd & Hayden, 2015;Loewenstein, 1994), is a learning facilitator and has received increasing attentions in recent years (Grossnickle, 2016;Kang et al., 2009;von Stumm, Hell, & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2011). It has been found that curiosity is associated with information retrieving (Gruber, Gelman, & Ranganath, 2014;Kang et al., 2009), question-asking behaviors (Jirout & Klahr, 2012), problemsolving skills (Di Leo, Muis, Singh, & Psaradellis, 2019), exploration behaviors (Litman, Hutchins, & Russon, 2005;Vogl, Pekrun, Murayama, & Loderer, 2020), and achievement (Shah, Weeks, Richards, & Kaciroti, 2018;von Stumm et al., 2011). However, to date, the number of studies on curiosity and school achievement is comparatively small, and many of them have used cross-sectional data (see reviews by Grossnickle, 2016;von Stumm et al., 2011). ...
... The study revealed that openness to experience, rather than intellectual curiosity (operationalized using the Need for Cognition scale), was the driving factor for learning (von Stumm, 2018). Nevertheless, recently, a large-scale study (sample size = 6200) found associations between parents' reported curiosity and kindergarten children's test performances in reading and math (Shah et al., 2018). Researchers have also found that epistemic curiosity is a mediator between personality traits (i.e., conscientiousness, openness) and course grades (Hassan, Bashir, & Mussel, 2015). ...
... The personality perspective assumes that epistemic curiosity has indiscernible effects on different subjects (Baumert et al., 2017). Preliminary evidence from a kindergarten sample (Shah et al., 2018) also supports this. Nevertheless, the complex associations between domain-specific/− general motivation and achievement have been well documented (Gaspard, Häfner, Parrisius, Trautwein, & Nagengast, 2017;Guo, Wang, Ketonen, Eccles, & Salmela-Aro, 2018;Marsh & Craven, 2006). ...
To examine the prospective association between epistemic curiosity and academic achievement, this study focused on 820 (64.2% females) second-year high school students (age 17–18), and their performances in the matriculation exams one year later. In addition, two types of epistemic curiosity, the interest and deprivation types, were examined as independent predictors. Furthermore, the role of curiosity in matriculation exam performance was examined at the general and subject level (i.e., mother tongue and math) by accounting for gender, social economic status, and subject motivation (i.e., subject expectancy and task values). Moreover, we examined the possible mediating role of subject motivation between curiosity and achievement. The path models’ results showed that interest-type curiosity had a direct relation with overall matriculation performance, whereas deprivation-type curiosity had an indirect relation only. For mother tongue performance, interest-type curiosity was the main prospective predictor, although its direct relation disappeared. For math matriculation performance, only deprivation-type curiosity had an indirect relation. The results imply that epistemic curiosity can promote academic achievement, but that the association is achieved through different pathways that depend on curiosity types, motivation mediators, and the domain level of achievements.
... In the study, they primarily sampled low-income children and did not investigate the relationship between ATL and children's academic achievement across diverse family SES. Shah et al. (2018) sampled 6,200 U.S. preschool children and explored the interaction between family SES and children's curiosity in shaping children's academic achievement. They found that children's curiosity positively predicted their reading and math performance, and the association was stronger among children from lower SES families. ...
... It can be seen that ATL is an important protective factor for low-SES children's the development of academic skills. This result supports a prior study by Shah et al. (2018), who found that family SES moderated the relationship between curiosity and preschool children's reading and math skills, and this relationship was stronger for low-SES children. Also, Razza et al. (2010) claimed that ATL acted as a protective factor for economically disadvantaged children who are at risk in school readiness measures. ...
This study examined the mediating role of children’s approaches to learning (ATL) in parenting style and Chinese preschoolers’ pre-academic skills (i.e., literacy and numeracy) as well as the moderating role of family socioeconomic status (SES) in the mediating process. Participants were 307 children aged five to six years old from four public kindergartens in Shanghai, China. Parents provided demographic information and reported their parenting style (i.e., authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive) and teachers rated each child’s ATL and pre-academic skills. Results indicated that: (1) authoritative parenting positively related to children’s pre-academic skills while no significant relationships were identified either for authoritarian or permissive parenting with pre-academic skills; (2) children’s ATL partially mediated the relationship between authoritative parenting and children’s pre-academic skills; (3) family SES moderated the relationship between children’s ATL and pre-academic skills. Specifically, children’s ATL was more strongly related to pre-academic skills for children from low SES families as compared to their high-SES peers. These findings contribute to the understanding of the effects of parenting styles on Chinese children’s early academic achievement and underscore the importance of ATL to children’s pre-academic skills, especially for low-SES children.
... Science is based on simple ideas and beliefs. proving that advances in these and other numerical methods are in line with national reports on scientific guidelines Barcelos et al., 2018) and proposals for early youth honing Shah et al., 2018). The system's basic reasoning, thinking, correspondence, connections, and pictures help children learn content knowledge (Pratama et al., 2015). ...
... Educators build and grow children's understanding of numbers and interest in them by using these moments and planning a variety of encounters in the context of logical thoughts. Because children's experiences have such a deep effect on how they think about science, it's important to make sure that their first encounters with number-crunching are fun and supportive (Shah et al., 2018). In their early years, it's important for kids to believe they can understand and use math by the end of the day and to see science as a part of their compass. ...
Due to how fast life moves these days, most parents forget to keep an eye on their children’s development and math skills as early as 4 years old. The role of child care is very important to enhance quality assurance practices among staff for the development of future leaders. The main objective of this study is to determine the strength of the relationships between each element and arithmetic proficiency among Malaysian TASKA children. This study is significant to identify the primary factors that influence children’s math skills. A questionnaire was utilized to collect data. From 376 TASKAs registered in Malaysia, only 103 of the 458 selected centers provide care and instruction for children aged 36 to 48 months. Between the ages of 36 and 46 months, language, communication, and early reading skills account for the majority of a child’s mathematical ability. Therefore, an effective training module should be built on these characteristics. The upcoming study will compare all unregistered TASKA facilities to the facilities that have been registered throughout Malaysia.
... However, the eagerness that they exhibited in using the ruler to take a measurement reflected their attempt to find out how to use the measuring tool. A high level of curiosity about early mathematics was reflected by their diligence and attention to their assignment (Shah et al., 2018). The children built their own concepts in measuring an object using comparison. ...
... They were able to understand the concept of measurement and express their thoughts regarding the learning and the game. Some curiosity characteristics were observed during the learning activity, such as, the joy when discovering the answer, showing curiosity when trying to find the answer, and performing the task diligently (Kashdan et al., 2018;Kashdan & Silvia, 2012;Litman, 2005Litman, , 2008Shah et al., 2018). This research revealed that children's interactions during a game opened a pathway for them to get to know about early mathematics concepts of measurement and attracted their curiosity. ...
This research aimed to generate a learning trajectory in an introduction to early mathematics, precisely to measure learning using educational games and Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) and to describe young children’s curiosity in learning early mathematics. Children need to have an understanding to take a measurement and use a learning trajectory to learn how to differentiate measurable and countable quantities and to tell the longer and the greater in number. The design of this research involves three phases, namely, preliminary design, experimentation, and retrospective analysis. A Hypothetical Learning Trajectory (HLT) using educational games was developed by collecting data from documentation, observations, and interviews. The results obtained from the implementation in the classroom showed that the educational games were able to help young children get to know early mathematics, particularly on measurements of lengths and volumes. There is an association with several factors in the selection of realistic problems. Communications during the game could stimulate an introduction to measurement. The use of objects in students’ vicinity also contributed to their experiments relating to measurement. The results of this research inform policymaking for teachers in designing learning in the classroom in introducing early mathematics based on educational games and Realistic Mathematics Education (RME).
... The relationship between curiosity and interest, particularly whether they are distinct, has been the subject of numerous discussions (see Peterson & Hidi, 2019 special issue). Both variables have been shown to be associated with learning (Hidi, 2001;Kang et al., 2009;Shah, Weeks, Richards, & Kaciroti, 2018), motivation (Tang & Salmela-Aro, 2021;Vogl, Pekrun, Murayama, & Loderer, 2020), and cognitive development (Malanchini, Engelhardt, Grotzinger, Harden, & Tucker-Drob, 2019;Renninger, Hidi, & Krapp, 1992). For this reason, curiosity is often conflated with interest in the research literature Shin & Kim, 2019). ...
... Recently, the finding that curiosity promotes learning and memory (Brod & Breitwieser, 2019;Kang et al., 2009;Shah et al., 2018) led researchers to also consider it as a motivational variable that is malleable (Grossnickle, 2016). To date, researchers have studied curiosity as an epistemic emotion (i.e., emotions that relate to knowledge construction; e.g., Nerantzaki & Efklides, 2019;Pekrun, Vogl, Muis, & Sinatra, 2017), a motivational disposition (e.g., Jirout & Klahr, 2012;Kahan, Landrum, Carpenter, Helft, & Jamieson, 2017), and as a task induced motivational state (e.g., Kang et al., 2009;Loewenstein, 1994). ...
Three studies on the relationship between curiosity and interest were reported. The first study was a meta-analysis that examined the Pearson correlations between scales assessing curiosity and interest. Based on 24 studies (31 effect sizes), we found that the curiosity scales correlated with the interest scales at a moderate level (r = .53), but they had extremely high heterogeneity. The second and third studies applied network analyses (i.e., co-occurrence analysis and correlation-based analysis) to data that was collected using experience sampling method. Across the studies, we found that while the feelings of curiosity reflected feelings of inquisitiveness, the feelings of interest were aligned with positive affect such as enjoyment and happiness. Importantly, an asymmetrical pattern was found in curiosity-interest co-occurrences: when the feelings of curiosity occurred, the co-occurrence of the feelings of interest was highly likely, but not so vice versa. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
... Furthermore, these families do not have sufficient capital (e.g., educational resources) to meet the needs of children so that children can only improve their academic achievement on their own, such as through more learning engagement (Kim and Fong, 2013). Thus, the relationship between children's learning engagement and academic achievement was more prominent for children from low SES families (Shah et al., 2018). On the other hand, in high SES families, parents emphasize on holistic development and create an artistic atmosphere, cultivating parent-child reading habits, etc. (Niklas et al., 2020;Yuan et al., 2021). ...
... Children from higher SES families had more learning resources and support conducive to learning achievement (Shi and Tan, 2021). However, since children from low SES families have limited learning resources, learning motivation behavior (i.e., learning engagement) compensates for this deficiency (Shah et al., 2018). Thus, learning engagement had a greater impact on the children from low SES families. ...
To investigate the relationships among child psychological abuse and neglect (CPAN), children’s learning engagement, family socioeconomic status (family SES), and children’s academic achievement, 271 children (Mage = 9.41 ± 0.81 years old) and their parents participated in this study with a longitudinal design. Results revealed that learning engagement at T1 mediated the relationship between CPAN at T1 and academic achievement at T2 when gender, age, grade, and academic achievement at T1 were under control. Family SES at T1 moderated the relationship between children’s learning engagement at T1 and academic achievement at T2. The association between learning engagement and academic achievement was stronger among children from lower family SES. Our findings highlighted the negative impact of CPAN and the critical role of learning engagement in children’s academic achievement, especially for those from low SES families.
... For example, a meta-analysis of characteristics affecting academic achievement revealed that curiosity predicted academic performance (von Stumm et al., 2011). In other studies, parent and teacher ratings of children's curiosity have predicted achievement (Shah et al., 2018) and standardized test performance (Alberti & Witryol, 1994). Additionally, curiosity has been shown to foster greater recall, persistence, and reading comprehension (Ainley et al., 2002;Arnone et al., 1994). ...
... Ainley et al., 2002;Arnone et al., 1994) and test scores (e.g. Alberti & Witryol, 1994;Shah et al., 2018;von Stumm et al., 2011). However, this previous research focused on trait curiosity, not state curiosity, which is what we measured in this study. ...
While many view learning as a process of reducing learners’ uncertainty, research suggests that instruction that is uncertain can promote learning and transfer better than instruction that is certain. In addition, research on curiosity suggests that uncertainty is a key trigger of curiosity, which in turn can facilitate learning. However, educational research rarely examines the direct effects of uncertainty on curiosity, learning, or transfer. Additionally, research on the effect of curiosity on learning rarely considers state-level curiosity or how curiosity changes over time. In a study with 208 middle school students learning physics, we addressed these gaps. Participants in two conditions completed learning activities where they invented their own equations for physical science phenomena. The Low Uncertainty condition received relevant information on task process before inventing, while information on task process was withheld in the High Uncertainty (HU) condition, which received irrelevant information before inventing. Both conditions learned the physics content equally well, but the HU condition demonstrated greater state-level curiosity and performed better on transfer problems. Moreover, in both conditions, curiosity decreased over time as students gained more information. Surprisingly, curiosity did not predict learning or transfer, which suggests that curiosity was not the mechanism by which uncertainty influenced transfer. This study advances the notion that introducing uncertainty in learning activities can, perhaps counter-intuitively, promote transfer of knowledge across contexts while also rousing learners’ curiosity. This work demonstrates a practical way for educators to induce uncertainty, by withholding information about task process. This research also broadens our understanding of how to provoke curiosity in classroom contexts.
... Mathematics is not given and concluded knowledge in advance, but always active thinking, therefore the task of the educator is not only to transfer mathematical knowledge, but also to create and stimulate interest, curiosity, and the need for knowledge (cf. Shah et al., 2018) The educator first formulates the problem situation and then guides and supports the children in their efforts to find possible solutions (Papadakis et al., 2017). The educator should never prevent children from independently searching for a way to a solution; otherwise, they will nullify the formative aspect of mathematical education. ...
Early mathematics teaching and learning are of paramount importance for developing mathematics skills for primary school. This contribution analyzes some fundamental concepts related to the early teaching and learning of mathematics in kindergarten. We primarily focus on the content and teaching methods used in kindergarten for effective mathematical learning. In particular, pupils should be introduced to four major areas of mathematics, namely (1) logic and language; (2) numbers and basic arithmetic; (3) the geometry and measurement of space; and (4) data processing (statistics). Each of these can be developed and addressed through specific games and in a meaningful and experiential way.
... Pemberian pembelajaran calistung boleh saja diterapkan akan tetapi harus berdasar peraturan yang ada, apabila tergesa-gesa serta media yang tidak tepat, berdampak stres akademik pada anak (Wulandari & Avivah, 2023). Membina prestasi akademik anak sejak dini memerlukan beberapa tahapan, penting diketahui menumbuhakan kesadaran akan pentingnya ketrampilan sosial emosional yang diperlukan untuk kesiapan sekolah anak (Shah et al., 2018). ...
Requirements for entry into primary school are not only based on the age limit of the child, but also on reading requirements. Besides that, the lack of interesting image visualization media makes it seem monotonous and boring for children. The purpose of this dedication to the community is to provide knowledge for teachers and parents at Ilman Nafi' tutoring in Kudus Regency regarding strategies to assist and stimulate early childhood reading. Calistung stands for reading, writing and calculating, these three are basic abilities that a person must possess in order to learn other things more easily. The method of counseling activities starts from event preparation, pre-test before giving material, giving material through power point slides, post-test evaluation, and closing. The instrument in providing material is power point, to carry out the pre-test and post-test using a questionnaire. The output to be achieved is that the teacher and parents make the Cergam (Cerita Bergambar) media and practice and apply it so that they can increase children's interest in reading. The PkM gap analysis is to minimize the need for Calistung through fun reading strategies with Cergam media. The results of the service obtained a pre-test score of 15% and an increase in the post-test score to 100%, the increase in scores from before and after giving the material shows that the counseling has succeeded in increasing knowledge for teachers and parents of Ilman Nafi's tutoring. Abstrak Persyaratan untuk masuk ke sekolah dasar tidak hanya didasarkan pada batas usia anak, tetapi juga pada persyaratan membaca. Selain itu kurangnya media visualisasi gambar yang menarik sehingga terkesan monoton dan membosankan bagi anak. Tujuan Pengabdian kepada Masyarakat ini untuk memberikan pengetahuan bagi guru dan orang tua di bimbingan belajar Ilman Nafi’ Kabupaten Kudus mengenai strategi mendampingi dan menstimulasi membaca anak usia dini. Calistung adalah singkatan dari membaca, menulis, dan menghitung, ketiganya merupakan kemampuan dasar yang harus dimiliki seseorang agar dapat mempelajari hal lain dengan lebih mudah. Metode kegiatan penyuluhan mulai dari persiapan acara, pre-test sebelum pemberian materi, pemberian materi melalui slide power point, post-test evaluasi, dan penutupan. Instrumen dalam memberikan materi adalah power point, untuk melakuakan pre-test dan post-test menggunakan angket. Luaran yang ingin dicapai adalah guru dan orang tua membuat media Cergam (Cerita Bergambar) serta mempraktikkan dan menerapkan melalui media Cergam sehingga dapat meningkatkan minat membaca anak. Gap analysis PkM yaitu meminimalisir kebutuhan Calistung melalui strategi membaca menyenangkan berbantu media Cergam. Hasil pengabdian diperoleh nilai pre-test sejumlah 15% dan meningkat pada nilai post-test menjadi 100%, kenaikan nilai dari sebelum dan sesudah pemberian materi menunjukkan bahwa pemberian penyuluhan berhasil menambah pengetahuan bagi guru dan orang tua bimbingan belajar Ilman Nafi’.
... The investigation of one's surroundings, also known as exploratory behavior, is a fundamental aspect of a child's understanding of the world. The innate urge of a child to independently explore his environment is the foundation of research-based learning (Ahmetoglu, 2019;Jirout, 2020;Shah, Weeks, Richards, & Kaciroti, 2018). ...
This study aims to determine the effectiveness of the author's teaching technology in developing schoolchildren's research skills, the challenges an elementary school faces, and how the entire process of developing research skills works. Quantitative and qualitative research techniques were used. Participants were from No.15, No.1, No.46, and No.16 schools in Ust-Kamenogorsk (East Kazakhstan). A random selection was made of an EG comprising 176 students and a CG comprising 173 students. To test the hypothesis that the author's teaching technology in studying natural science fosters the effectiveness of generating research skills, the research methodology employed an experimental pretest-posttest learning CG and EG study. As a result of the introduction of the developed technology in the EG, the levels of formation of these skills among students from the CG and the EG differ significantly. Finally, the developed technology can be used in the practical activities of teachers in elementary schools and serve as the basis for creating methodological materials that perform the developing function of teaching "Natural Science."
... The ability to recognize the concept of numbers is part of the ability to think symbolically in aspects of cognitive development of children aged 4-5 years which is clearly stated in Ministerial Regulation, Number 137 of 2014 (Pendidikan et al., 2014). Children's ability to recognize the concept of numbers is a strong starting ground so that children can master and understand higher mathematics learning (Shah et al., 2018). Some of the results of previous research studies stated that there are benefits from the development of the ability to recognize number concepts from an early age, such as developing the ability to recognize numbers, mention numbers, compare numbers, and calculations (Yilmaz, 2017), there is a connection from learning numbers with the addition of children's vocabulary (receptive and expressive) (Sarnecka & Lee, 2019), the provision of symbolic and non-symbolic programs has a positive effect on increasing the ability to recognize numbers and arithmetic in preschool-aged children (Van Herwegen et al., 2018), knowledge of numbers has a positive impact on children's arithmetic abilities (Östergren & Träff, 2013). ...
The ability to recognize the concept of early numbers in early childhood is very important to develop so that children are ready to take part in learning mathematics at a higher level. This study aims to determine the effect of mathematics learning approaches and self-regulation to recognize the concept of early numbers ability in kindergarten. The study used an experimental method with a treatment design by level 2x2. The sample used was 32 children. Score data, ability to recognize number concepts, analyzed and interpreted. The results showed that: (1) The Realistic Mathematics Education approach is better than the Open Ended Approach in improving the ability to recognize children's number concepts; (2) There is an interaction effect between mathematics learning approaches and Self-Regulation to recognize the concept of early numbers ability; (3) The Realistic Mathematics Education approach is more suitable for children with high self-regulation, (4) The Open Ended approach is more suitable for children with low self-regulation. Subsequent experiments are expected to find mathematics learning approaches for children whose self-regulation is low on recognizing the concept of early numbers ability. Keywords: mathematics learning approach, self-regulation, early number concept ability References: Adjie, N., Putri, S. U., & Dewi, F. (2019). Penerapan Pendidikan Matematika Realistik (PMR) dalam Meningkatkan Pemahaman Konsep Bilangan Cacah pada Anak Usia Dini. 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... Thus, it becomes a source for the effective functioning of the learning process (Yazıcı & Kartal, 2020). Epistemic curiosity is also positively related to school achievement (Eren & Coskun, 2016;Shah et al., 2018;Tang & Salmela-Aro, 2021). Students with higher levels of epistemic curiosity tend to have mastery goals (Eren, 2009) and deeper strategies for learning (Richards et al., 2013), which leads to effective learning experiences. ...
... Rewards from the environment are ignored; however, rewards are generated that are intrinsic to the agent. Similarly, stimulating curiosity in a child is more likely to result in better scholar performance than merely rewarding the child for good grades (Shah et al., 2018). To generate this kind of curiosity in RL, the software agent predicts the outcome of its actions and is surprised (rewarded) if the outcome does not match its predictions. ...
Machine learning tools, particularly artificial neural networks (ANN), have become ubiquitous in many scientific disciplines, and machine learning-based techniques flourish not only because of the expanding computational power and the increasing availability of labeled data sets but also because of the increasingly powerful training algorithms and refined topologies of ANN. Some refined topologies were initially motivated by neuronal network architectures found in the brain, such as convolutional ANN. Later topologies of neuronal networks departed from the biological substrate and began to be developed independently as the biological processing units are not well understood or are not transferable to in silico architectures. In the field of neuroscience, the advent of multichannel recordings has enabled recording the activity of many neurons simultaneously and characterizing complex network activity in biological neural networks (BNN). The unique opportunity to compare large neuronal network topologies, processing, and learning strategies with those that have been developed in state-of-the-art ANN has become a reality. The aim of this review is to introduce certain basic concepts of modern ANN, corresponding training algorithms, and biological counterparts. The selection of these modern ANN is prone to be biased (e.g., spiking neural networks are excluded) but may be sufficient for a concise overview.
... Especially, experimental studies have shown that children's active self-exploration occurs for the purpose of reducing uncertainty rather than merely seeking novel information (Schulz and Bonawitz, 2007;Cook et al., 2011;Blanco and Sloutsky, 2021). It has been suggested that EC is linked to well-being (Kashdan and Steger, 2007;Engel, 2009;Wang and Li, 2015) as well as academic achievement (Shah et al., 2018). Despite the positive aspects of EC, according to Engel (2009), children show less EC as they age, especially after starting school. ...
Curiosity, the desire to learn new information, has a powerful effect on children’s learning. Parental interactions facilitate curiosity-driven behaviors in young children, such as self-exploration and question-asking, at a certain time. Furthermore, parenting quality predicts better academic outcomes. However, it is still unknown whether persistent parenting quality is related to children’s trait epistemic curiosity (EC). The current study examined whether parenting practices, responsiveness, and demandingness are cross-sectionally related to the trait EC of children in different age groups (preschoolers, younger and older school-aged children). We adopted a shortened Japanese version of the parenting style questionnaire and modified the trait EC questionnaire in young children. A sample of 244 caregivers (87.37% mothers) of children (ages 3–12) was recruited through educational institutions in Japan and reported on their parenting practices and trait EC. All data analyses were performed using SPSS version 26. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to determine the explanatory variables for children’s trait EC. Self-reported parental responsiveness significantly explained EC scores. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to show a cross-sectional relationship between parental responsiveness and children’s trait EC. Future research should clarify whether parental responsiveness in early childhood predicts children’s EC later in life.
... Curiosity is associated with the kind of wonder that can ignite interest and awaken students' imagination (Egan et al, 2014). Recent empirical studies have shown that high levels of curiosity are linked to increased academic achievement (Shah et al, 2018). ...
The mass closure of schools as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic paralyzed many children's education. Teachers across the globe did their best to engage students and help support their learning through online educational formats. However, teachers and parents indicated that students' struggled with these approaches. This study aims to build on successes some science teachers had using curiosity as a starting point in inquiry-based science projects that bridged face-to-face and online learning formats. This year-long qualitative, participatory action research study brings together fourteen teachers (seven elementary and seven secondary) and four university faculty using an online community of inquiry framework. This work is in its early stages. Through two cycles of planning, implementation and reflection, the community of inquiry will ultimately develop a model for best practices and resources that respond to the educational challenges faced during the pandemic and help prepare teachers for future crises. These materials will be shared with other teachers as open education resources, that are freely accessible, digital, re-mixable and revisable. This work will also contribute to theory regarding best practices for curiosity-driven, inquiry-based science education in blended learning spaces.
... 2 Related work 2.1 Epistemic curiosity and QA training in education Curiosity plays an important role in learning from infancy [53] to adulthood [45], and in fostering academic achievement, particularly for children with low socio-economic status [50]. It can be seen as a a personality trait ( [28]), a psycho-emotional state aroused by external situations( [39], [27]), [4],...) or as a malleable skill that can be trained through teaching specific practices. ...
Students' ability to ask curious questions is a crucial skill that improves their learning processes. To train this skill, previous research has used a conversational agent that propose specific cues to prompt children's curiosity during learning. Despite showing pedagogical efficiency, this method is still limited since it relies on generating the said prompts by hand for each educational resource, which can be a very long and costly process. In this context, we leverage the advances in the natural language processing field and explore using a large language model (GPT-3) to automate the generation of this agent's curiosity-prompting cues to help children ask more and deeper questions. We then used this study to investigate a different curiosity-prompting behavior for the agent. The study was conducted with 75 students aged between 9 and 10. They either interacted with a hand-crafted conversational agent that proposes "closed" manually-extracted cues leading to predefined questions, a GPT-3-driven one that proposes the same type of cues, or a GPT-3-driven one that proposes "open" cues that can lead to several possible questions. Results showed a similar question-asking performance between children who had the two "closed" agents, but a significantly better one for participants with the "open" agent. Our first results suggest the validity of using GPT-3 to facilitate the implementation of curiosity-stimulating learning technologies. In a second step, we also show that GPT-3 can be efficient in proposing the relevant open cues that leave children with more autonomy to express their curiosity.
... One of the outcomes of interest in the pilot project was curiosity. Shah et al. (2018) highlighted that curiosity motivates behavioural exploration and finding answers to the unknown. Banning and Sullivan (2011) supported this argument, stating that the curiosity of young students is very high, as it is a key component that drives exploration and refinement of their perceptions while gathering information and learning from the environment. ...
Every year, high school students response to choosing a science stream has indicated a declining pattern. It may be due to the lack of technical application of science that students cannot foresee, thus preventing them from having a clear vision of how science and technology could greatly help daily human life. The study aims to assess the knowledge of high school students through STEM education via a project-based learning method using the hydroponic kit. Seventy students from a government school in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia, participated in this study. The questionnaire was then evaluated based on the scores and displayed improvement. The mean score for the pre-test of general knowledge was M=3.8857, SD=1.41977, and then it increased to M=6.1857, SD=1.21932 for the post-test. In addition, the mean score for the pre-test of hydroponic system advantages was M=6.2000, SD=1.93068, which increased to M=8.8286, SD=0.65875 for the post-test. Meanwhile, the mean score for the pre-test of disadvantages of the hydroponic system was M=7.2571, SD=2.21121, subsequently increasing to M=9.4286, SD=0.73369 for the post-test. Finally, the mean score for the pre-test of practical knowledge was M=9.3429, SD=2.51307, and then increased to M=15.0571, SD=1.84065 for the post-test. Students’ responses to the tests indicated that their interest in the field of science has increased through their involvement in the hydroponic kit project.
... For example, although a meta-analysis found that intelligence was the strongest predictor of academic performance, curiosity predicted performance beyond intelligence, even when Developing Intellectual Character controlling for students' effort and ability (von Stumm et al., 2011). Similarly, curiosity related to kindergarten children's academic performance even after controlling for effortful control, and the association was strongest for low-income children (Shah et al., 2018). In addition to children's curiosity, the educational context is also important to consider, as negative perceptions of school can lead to lower academic performance for higher curious students (Kashdan & Yuen, 2007). ...
Uncertainty can play an important role in learning in educational settings. The realization that one does not know something can be perceived as an opportunity for learning, and the desire to seek this information is related to an important intellectual virtue: curiosity. Specifically, curiosity can be defined as desiring and persisting in information seeking and exploration, especially in response to uncertainty or information gaps. Despite the role curiosity plays in learning, uncertainty is often viewed negatively by students in educational contexts, where performance is valued and leads to performance-oriented goals, rather than mastery-oriented goals. In this chapter, we review how uncertainty-driven curiosity can support learning and develop effective learners. We include a discussion of how curiosity can also support the development of more general intellectual character through its relation to creativity, open-minded thinking, and intellectual courage. Finally, we describe how uncertainty in education can be perceived in maladaptive ways that might suppress curiosity, and give specific strategies related to approaches to uncertainty that can be applied to educational contexts to support curiosity.
... Likewise, studies dealing with the effect of dispositional curiosity in children and adults provide evidence that curiosity is associated with markers of crystallized intelligence. That is, curious children gained more knowledge in learning sessions (Arnone et al., 1994;Van Schijndel et al., 2018) and scored higher on scholastic achievement tests (Alberti & Witryol, 1994;Raine et al., 2002;Shah et al., 2018). Research in the work context shows that dispositional epistemic curiosity is positively related to learning measured by supervisors' ratings (Hassan et al., 2015), self-reported socialization-related learning (Reio & Callahan 2004), training performance (Mussel et al., 2012), vocational school grades (Mussel, 2013a), and intelligence test measuring g c (Dellenbach & Zimprich, 2008;Mussel, 2013a;Von Stumm & Deary, 2012). ...
Curiosity is a basic driver for learning and development. It has been conceptualized as a desire for new information and knowledge that motivates people to explore their physical and social environment. This raises the question of whether curiosity facilitates the acquisition of knowledge. The present study ( N = 100) assessed epistemic curiosity and general knowledge as well as fluid intelligence (i.e., reasoning ability, processing speed, memory) in a student sample. The results indicate that epistemic curiosity is moderately related to knowledge ( r = .24) and reasoning ability ( r = .30). None of the fluid intelligence measures did moderate the relationship between curiosity and knowledge (interaction terms β < |.08|). Rather, reasoning ability mediated the relationship between epistemic curiosity and general knowledge (indirect effect: β = .10, p < .05). The findings suggest that epistemic curiosity facilitates the acquisition of knowledge by promoting reasoning. One might speculate that epistemically curious individuals enrich their environment, which in turn enhances their cognitive ability.
... These two constructs are dissimilar and provide details about their differences but hold a particular reputation for educational training (Tang et al., 2020). Curiosity is a human drive that propels people to seek information or knowledge (Grossnickle, 2016;Kidd & Hayden, 2015), and has been shown to have reflective effects on learning (Kang et al., 2009;Shah, Weeks, Richards, & Kaciroti, 2018), motivation (Vogl et al., 2020), and cognitive development (Malanchini et al., 2019). ...
Curiosity and academic self-concept as psychological constructs are often mentioned in education and psychology. These constructs are elusive in terms of how they are exhibited or portrayed and measured. Despite their elusive nature, they are highly significant to the success or otherwise of learners. Therefore, the current study explored curiosity and academic self-concept among students of category "A" Senior High schools in the Central Region of Ghana. Using a descriptive-quantitative method, a sample of 400 students was selected through proportionate-stratified and systematic sampling techniques. Adapted curiosity (Kashdan et al., 2018) and academic self-concept (Liu & Wang, 2005) scales were used for the data collection. The data collected were analysed using frequencies, percentages, and structural equation modelling (SEM). The study revealed that the majority of the students possessed low curious abilities and low academic self-concepts. The study further revealed that curiosity of deprivation sensitivity (b=.577, p<.001), the curiosity of stress tolerance (b=.248, p=.007), and curiosity of thrill-seeking (b=.544, p<.001) positively and significantly predicted academic self-concept of students but the curiosity of joyful exploration and social curiosity did not predict academic self-concept of students. It was concluded that students' curious abilities were precursors to their academic self-concept. Thereupon, teachers need to devise new approaches by allowing students to engage in other learning opportunities without much restrictions so that they could hone their natural potentials.
... Curiosity is a fundamental element of our cognition that influences various aspects of human life from a child's academic performance (Shah et al., 2018) to an adolescent's well-being (Jovanovic & Brdaric, 2012). Self-curiosity, which focuses on individuals' inner world, is currently attracting attention in the field of clinical psychology. ...
Recently, self-curiosity has attracted scholarly attention as a crucial factor in psychological tests and therapy processes. To measure individuals’ degree of self-curiosity, researchers developed the self-curiosity attitude–interest (SCAI) scale; it originated in Italy and has been applied across cultures. This study investigates whether the original SCAI scale can be adapted in Japan and explores the characteristics of the structure of self-curiosity in Japan. Data from 257 undergraduate students were collected through a website, and exploratory factor analysis was conducted. The original 7-item version of the scale exhibited a poor fit. Therefore, nine new items were added to the statements included in the original scale, and the 16 resulting items were employed to investigate the structure of self-curiosity in Japan. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the Japanese version of the SCAI scale (SCAI-J) comprises seven new items and follows the two-factor structure (i.e., attitude and interest) of the original SCAI scale. In terms of construct validity, the SCAI-J scale produced significant correlations with the Japanese versions of the Satisfaction with Life Scale and the Rumination–Reflection Questionnaire as well as the short form of the Japanese Big-Five scale. These results suggest that self-curiosity is a common concept despite the differences among European, Central American and Asian cultures.
... Curiosity is widely acknowledged as a crucial aspect of children's development, and as an important part of the learning process (Jirout and Klahr, 2012). Evidence suggests associations between curiosity and achievement at school entry (Shah et al., 2018) and that curiosity supports academic performance, even when controlling for students' effort and ability (von Stumm et al., 2011). Despite this evidence, most prior research on the development of curiosity or on promoting curiosity has been conducted in lab settings with individual children (e.g., Cook et al., 2011;Gweon et al., 2014;Shneidman et al., 2016;Danovitch et al., 2021 among others), rather than in school settings. ...
Curiosity is widely acknowledged as a crucial aspect of children’s development and as an important part of the learning process, with prior research showing associations between curiosity and achievement. Despite this evidence, there is little research on the development of curiosity or on promoting curiosity in school settings, and measures of curiosity promotion in the classroom are absent from the published literature. This article introduces the Curiosity in Classrooms (CiC) Framework coding protocol, a tool for observing and coding instructional practices that support the promotion of curiosity. We describe the development of the framework and observation instrument and the results of a feasibility study using the protocol, which gives a descriptive overview of curiosity-promoting instruction in 35 elementary-level math lessons. Our discussion includes lessons learned from this work and suggestions for future research using the developed observation tool.
... Furthermore, advanced probability sampling across the nation would make it possible to ensure that the data is nationally representative. Future studies may also wish to additionally examine outcomes that promote cognitive development among children and adolescents, such as intellectual curiosity [56,57] in order to see if there is similar variability in those contributing constructs. ...
Although previous research helped to define differences in intelligence between neurotypicals and those with ASD, results were limited by small sample sizes or restricted subtests. Using data from the NIMH Data Archive, this study examined the intelligence of children with ASD (N = 671). Results demonstrate an average standard deviation of 25.75, which is 1.72 times greater than that of the normative sample for the WISC-III. Moreover, students with ASD are 12 times more likely than the general population of students to score within the intellectual disability range, but are also 1.5 times more likely to score in the superior range, suggesting that more students with ASD should be considered for giftedness. Determining the diversity of intelligence among those with ASD has implications for research, clinical practice, and neurological understanding.
... A meta-analysis by Schiefele et al. (1992) found that almost 10% of the variation in students' grades in academic settings could be attributed to the differences in curiosity motivation. Moreover, Shah et al. (2018) found that for lower socioeconomic status children, a high level of curiosity was associated with a greater improvement in academic performance, suggesting a key role combating the adverse effects of socioeconomic status on academic achievement, an especially salient feature for India. ...
Despite a high primary school enrollment in India, the overall learning levels have been low, and the dropout level in secondary school and beyond has been high. One reason for low learning levels and high drop-out rates is the student’s lack of motivation to learn in the classroom. We suggest that curiosity may be a useful tool to improve student motivation. We look at some important variables that have been found to affect curiosity in the classroom: self-determination needs, information relevance, coherence, concreteness, ease of comprehension, fantasy, belief about interest malleability, and information gap. Finally, we suggest ways to incorporate them in the classroom to improve student motivation.
... Research evidence shows a relationship between curiosity and creativity, and educational outcomes (e.g. Shah et al., 2018;Nami et al., 2014). However these skills as constructs are blurred and underdeveloped and reliable and valid assessment instruments and tools to cover these skills do not yet exist. ...
In the context of today’s uncertainty, endangered environment, growing inequalities and the complexity of our societies, education and assessment play a central role in preparing children for the opportunities and the challenges of the future. This foresight study offers a probable scenario of the evolution of assessment of learning outcomes in primary and secondary education in Europe, in the mid-term future, as a response to these trends. The proposed developments in assessment and in policymaking seek to stimulate debate at the European level and support forward-looking policy action. The study is the result of a trend impact and drivers analysis, and a strategic foresight exercise. The foresight methodology of this study included a rapid review of academic and policy studies on educational assessment, as well as a consultation with educational stakeholders at national and EU level through a two-round Delphi survey and online expert panel.
TD is inherently a cultural phenomenon, shaped by the intricate interplay of genetic predispositions, sociocultural experiences, and environmental influences. Within the context of individual development, cultural provisions and interventions constitute an integral component of TD. Cultural provisions and interventions are viewed as developmentally responsive when they address developmental needs and goals in a timely, proactive fashion, strategically positioned within specific TD contexts to accommodate diverse needs and challenges encountered by individuals during distinct developmental processes and phases. Recent research spanning the decade from 2010 to 2020 shows some degrees of alignment with the imperative of developmental responsive characteristic of the provisions/interventions research. It emphasizes the role of these provisions and interventions in initiating and sustaining TD, fostering positive talent growth trajectories. Nevertheless, there is a compelling call for a more systematic and programmatic research approach, one that pursues a specific line of inquiry on provisions and interventions across time, to comprehensively address this multifaceted category of TD research.
This paper is a report on a year-long action research project with a Community of Inquiry where a group of teachers from across primary, secondary, and tertiary contexts were developing and implementing student-centered, curiosity-driven, inquiry-based science projects to bridge face-to-face and online learning contexts and support their students' engagement in learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. We followed the teachers through two research cycles to investigate their driving question: "How can we best support our students' learning in blended learning environments through Curiosity-Driven, Inquiry-Based Science Education?" We report on their ideas, successes, and challenges as they created and implemented eighteen projects. In the first cycle of inquiry in fall 2020, the teachers met online to discuss plans, they implemented their plans with their classes, and they met online to reflect on their projects and share resources. In the second cycle of inquiry in spring 2021, the teachers met online again for further planning, implementation, and reflection. We recorded all online meetings, collected resources that teachers shared, and conducted thematic analysis. Findings indicated the primary focus for the teachers were: which education technology methods to use; the importance of supporting their students' voices to discuss their work at all stages of their projects; coming up with appropriate means of assessment of their students' projects; supporting their students in their developing research and problem-solving skills; and supporting their students to reflect on their learning. This study is significant because it demonstrates the creativity and innovation of a group of teachers in their efforts to support their students' engagement and learning through
Emerging empirical evidence supports play's potential to stimulate and foster scientific creativity. Focusing on how play relates to scientific creativity in adulthood, this review synthesizes the current state of knowledge in four areas: the play element in scientific research, the playfulness of scientists, mechanisms through which play affects scientific creativity, and environmental factors key to the play-to-create process in scientists' work. The review highlights several limitations hindering further research development in this area. Specifically, existing studies: (a) are largely qualitative and focus on descriptive analysis of the forms and/or select aspects of play, (b) do not sufficiently consider the unique characteristics and processes of scientific research, and (c) decontextualize the creative process by separating the player-creator from the environment. Building on this analysis, the author clarifies the conceptualization of play, playfulness, and scientific creativity, differentiates between creative and recreative play in relation to core scientific activities, and identifies useful conceptual and measurement tools to facilitate future domain-specific empirical studies of play and scientific creativity. Collectively, these insights advance a new integrative theoretical framework—the play-to-create model—to encourage and guide systematic and contextualized investigations of how play, playfulness, creative processes, and the environment interact to generate creative scientific outcomes.
This study explored whether, and how, preservice elementary teachers’ scientific curiosity related to their confidence for science teaching. A group of 29 preservice, elementary teachers in the U.S. engaged in a curiosity journaling strategy across a 16-week scientific inquiry course. Their expressions of curiosity were coded using Luce and Hsi’s framework of curiosity. Whether expressions of curiosity related to their confidence for teaching associated science topics was examined statistically. In addition, the categories of their curiosity were coded and are described across eight journal entries. The nature of the relationship between scientific curiosity and science teaching confidence, as well as the nature of the curiosity they expressed, are described. Generally, curiosity about specific scientific phenomena and changes in confidence for teaching those topics did not relate to one another. Relationships did emerge, however, among categories of curiosity and participants’ confidence for teaching seven specific science topics.
Parents support their children’s language and cognitive development through everyday, informal learning opportunities. We discuss how parents can capitalize on current research and theories of children’s development to cultivate the foundational skills needed to succeed in the twenty-first century. We first examine how children learn; specifically, how being active, engaged, meaningful, socially interactive, and joyful leads to optimal learning. We then discuss the 6 Cs (collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creativity, and confidence), or what children learn, and how parents can play a central role in supporting their children’ development of these skills.
Parenting is a critical influence on the development of children across the globe. This handbook brings together scholars with expertise on parenting science and interventions for a comprehensive review of current research. It begins with foundational theories and research topics, followed by sections on parenting children at different ages, factors that affect parenting such as parental mental health or socioeconomic status, and parenting children with different characteristics such as depressed and anxious children or youth who identify as LGBTQ. It concludes with a section on policy implications, as well as prevention and intervention programs that target parenting as a mechanism of change. Global perspectives and the cultural diversity of families are highlighted throughout. Offering in-depth analysis of key topics such as risky adolescent behavior, immigration policy, father engagement, family involvement in education, and balancing childcare and work, this is a vital resource for understanding the most effective policies to support parents in raising healthy children.
The objective of this study was to understand if and for whom anger regulation relates to later reading and math achievement. The sample included 267 upper elementary school students from two schools (5% Asian, 10% Black, 6% Latinx, 17% Multiethnic/Other, and 62% White; 36% dual language learner; 60% female; average age = 9.7 years). Self-reported anger regulation and self- and teacher-reported emotional engagement were assessed. Then, reading and math standardized achievement were tested by the schools approximately three months later. Latent variable path analyzes suggested that withdrawal when experiencing anger (“anger withdraw”) had a significant, positive relation with later reading and math achievement outcomes, when controlling for other anger regulation strategies and demographics. Latent student- and teacher-reported emotional engagement moderated the relation of anger withdraw with later reading achievement. Discussion centers on anger regulation, moderation, and implications of anger regulation for school psychologists.
There is a great interest in studying creativity in children. Yet, the current literature on preschool creativity is sparse. Extending on work in the innovation literature, we propose that uncertainty, curiosity, and exploration are vital components of a larger model of creativity. In the current chapter, we examine this new model of creativity and its implications for preschool children. Specifically, we propose that play is an ideal context for supporting the components of the creativity model. We investigate challenges in implementing the model in educational settings and explore outstanding questions in the field of preschool creativity.
This chapter focuses on the role and value of not knowing for creativity, learning and development. More specifically, it proposes a typology of states that are conducive, in different ways, for creative learning, including certain knowing, uncertain not knowing, uncertain knowing, and certain not knowing. They are discussed, in turn, in relation to four associated experiences: trust, anxiety, curiosity and wonder, respectively. Towards the end, two models are proposed that specify how and when these experiences contribute to the process of creative learning. The first is focused on macro stages, the second on micro processes. While the former starts from uncertain not knowing, goes through the interplay between uncertain knowing and certain not knowing, and ends in certain knowledge, the processual model reveals the intricate relations between these experiences in each and every instance of creative learning. The developmental and educational implications of revaluing not knowing as a generate state are discussed in the end.KeywordsUncertaintyKnowledgeAnxietyTrustCuriosityWonderCreative learning
The purpose of this quantitative non-experimental descriptive-correlational study was to determine the significant influence of goals for reading towards self-efficacy of college students on campuses of a particular university. Researcher-made questionnaires on the two variables validated by the experts and subjected to pilot testing for reliability tests were conducted among college students in a specific private college. Then these questionnaires were administered considering a stratified random sample of 339 students. Data analysis tools used were weighted mean, Pearson-r, and regression analysis to test the hypotheses. The results showed that all reading goals, curiosity, involvement, importance, recognition, grades, and competition are all at a high level. Moreover, all the indicators of self-efficacy, to wit, identifying learning needs and setting goals, selecting learning resources and materials, seeking social assistance, organizing the learning process and environment, monitoring, evaluating, and transferring acquired skills or information to other contexts are also in high level. Further, it was found that there was a significant relationship between goals for reading and self-efficacy. In contrast, domains of goals for reading that significantly influence self-efficacy are importance and competition, while the rest of the domains do not considerably influence self-efficacy. Through this research, the reading goals, as it influenced students’ reading self-efficacy, which in turn resulted in greater reading milestones and academic achievement and would help educators enhanced their instructional management abilities.
The developing brain is highly malleable, meaning that children are acutely sensitive to their early experiences, for better or for worse. Early adversity significantly increases the risk for psychopathology and learning challenges. Recent work in animal models powerfully suggests that the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a major source of dopaminergic projections to the rest of the brain, is a key mediator for how early stressful experiences can become biologically embedded: in mice, absent or disrupted caregiving results in latent vulnerability of the dopaminergic system to stress well into adulthood. Thus, it may be that early adversity causes a shift in the developmental trajectory of the VTA, with cascading effects on later motivational and socioemotional processes. However, little is known about whether similar disruptions in VTA circuitry are detectable in children. Thus, I leveraged fMRI methods in 4- to 10-year-old children, to examine the functional integrity of dopaminergic circuitry early in development. In Chapter 2, I tested whether stress exposure relates to VTA resting-state functional connectivity. I found an age x stress exposure interaction, such that only children with lower stress exposure showed a positive relationship between age and VTA-mPFC connectivity, consistent with an interpretation that high stress exposure is related to blunted VTA maturation. Chapter 3 examined children’s neural responses to naturalistic emotional content using movie fMRI, and linked to parenting behaviors observed in the lab. I found that children who experienced more negative parenting showed reduced VTA activity during positive emotion scenes. Finally, Chapter 4 examined curiosity, a behavior that is supported by dopaminergic circuitry, and that encourages greater learning by engaging positive interest and intrinsic motivation. I tested whether individual differences in curiosity are reflected in resting-state connectivity patterns, and can be predicted by environmental experiences. Together, this work suggests that early experiences play a critical role in tuning dopaminergic neurocircuitry in children, with potentially enduring consequences for reward and socioemotional processing. This has implications both for education and for policy: how can we protect children in negative environments, and provide positive support that will allow them to best thrive as learners.
This paper explores curiosity of Further Education (FE) lec- turers in the United Kingdom through personal narratives and focused group discussions. The paper identifies how curiosity is viewed by FE lecturers as a positive trait for learners to possess, yet when discussing their own curiosities, views changed. Narratives emerge of curiosity being more of a problematic trait to possess whilst lecturing within the business-like structures and an outcome driven environment of FE. The lack of space for lecturer’s curiosity was viewed not as a specific institutions problem, but as a system wide problem across the culture of FE. Lecturers felt that creating curiosity, created more work for themselves and was neither celebrated nor embraced within their FE settings.
Researchers studying curiosity and interest note a lack of consensus in whether and how these important motivations for learning are distinct. Empirical attempts to distinguish them are impeded by this lack of conceptual clarity. Following a recent proposal that curiosity and interest are folk concepts, we sought to determine a non-expert consensus view on their distinction using machine learning methods. In Study 1, we demonstrate that there is a consensus in how they are distinguished, by training a Naïve Bayes classification algorithm to distinguish between free-text definitions of curiosity and interest (n = 396 definitions) and using cross-validation to test the classifier on two sets of data (main n = 196; additional n = 218). In Study 2, we demonstrate that the non-expert consensus is shared by experts and can plausibly underscore future empirical work, as the classifier accurately distinguished definitions provided by experts who study curiosity and interest (n = 92). Our results suggest a shared consensus on the distinction between curiosity and interest, providing a basis for much-needed conceptual clarity facilitating future empirical work. This consensus distinguishes curiosity as more active information seeking directed towards specific and previously unknown information. In contrast, interest is more pleasurable, in-depth, less momentary information seeking towards information in domains where people already have knowledge. However, we note that there are similarities between the concepts, as they are both motivating, involve feelings of wanting, and relate to knowledge acquisition.
In this study we examined the relationship of students' 21st century skills with their academic and behavioral outcomes. We investigated K-12 teachers' (n = 150) judgment of students' (n = 3,108) use of 21st century skills (i.e., persistence, curiosity, affect, and cognition behaviors) via a Likert-type rating scale. We compared teachers' ratings with students' academic and behavioral outcomes in a southeastern school district. We used Hierarchical Linear Modeling with length of teacher acquaintance with the student as the nesting variable. Teacher ratings for students' low instances of persistence behaviors and high instances of externalizing affect behaviors were predictive of a higher probability of student office discipline referrals. We found a positive correlation for teachers' ratings of students' cognition behaviors and their reading, mathematics, and science outcomes. Teachers' student length of acquaintance was significant for academic outcomes. Results indicated a predictive relationship with teachers' judgment of students' 21st century skills and student outcomes.
Researchers studying curiosity and interest note a lack of consensus in whether and how these important motivations for learning are distinct. Empirical attempts to distinguish them are impeded by this lack of conceptual clarity. Following a recent proposal that curiosity and interest are folk concepts, we sought to determine a non-expert consensus view on their distinction using machine learning methods. In Study 1, we demonstrate that there is a consensus in how they are distinguished, by training a Naïve Bayes classification algorithm to distinguish between free-text definitions of curiosity and interest (n = 396 definitions) and using cross-validation to test the classifier on two sets of data (main n = 196; additional n = 218). In Study 2, we demonstrate that the non-expert consensus is shared by experts and can plausibly underscore future empirical work, as the classifier accurately distinguished definitions provided by experts who study curiosity and interest (n = 92). Our results suggest a shared consensus on the distinction between curiosity and interest, providing a basis for much-needed conceptual clarity facilitating future empirical work. This consensus distinguishes curiosity as more active information seeking directed towards specific and previously unknown information. In contrast, interest is more pleasurable, in-depth, less momentary information seeking towards information in domains where people already have knowledge. However, we note that there are similarities between the concepts, as they are both motivating, involve feelings of wanting, and relate to knowledge acquisition.
Accumulating evidence in adults has shown that curiosity and surprise enhance memory via activity in the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, and dopaminergic areas. Based on findings of how these brain areas and their inter-connections develop during childhood and adolescence, we discuss how the effects of curiosity and surprise on memory may develop during childhood and adolescence. We predict that the maturation of brain areas potentially related to curiosity elicitation (hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex [ACC], prefrontal cortex) and protracted development of hippocampal-PFC and ACC-PFC connectivity lead to differential effects of curiosity and surprise on memory during childhood and adolescence. Our predictions are centred within the PACE (Prediction-Appraisal-Curiosity-Exploration) Framework which proposes multiple levels of analyses of how curiosity is elicited and enhances memory.
Curiosity has a long history of research and rich definitions and classifications as a common mental state and personality trait. The division and coordination of multiple brain regions enable individuals to form a cognitive process of generating and evaluating prediction error, triggering and mediating curiosity, and producing surprise and new prediction error, so as to reduce the prediction error and information gap between internal states and external environment, and eliminate uncertainty. Curiosity has a significant role in improving cognitive function and maintaining mental and physical health during development. Future research can be further considered from a cross-species, interdisciplinary, and multi-domain perspective to promote the deepening of research topics, the development of research methods, and the application of research results in curiosity.
Curiosity is a basic element of our cognition, but its biological function, mechanisms, and neural underpinning remain poorly understood. It is nonetheless a motivator for learning, influential in decision-making, and crucial for healthy development. One factor limiting our understanding of it is the lack of a widely agreed upon delineation of what is and is not curiosity. Another factor is the dearth of standardized laboratory tasks that manipulate curiosity in the lab. Despite these barriers, recent years have seen a major growth of interest in both the neuroscience and psychology of curiosity. In this Perspective, we advocate for the importance of the field, provide a selective overview of its current state, and describe tasks that are used to study curiosity and information-seeking. We propose that, rather than worry about defining curiosity, it is more helpful to consider the motivations for information-seeking behavior and to study it in its ethological context.
Numerous studies indicate that intrinsic motivation predicts academic achievement. However, relatively few have examined various subtypes of intrinsic motivation that predict overall achievement, such as motivation for exercise and physical activity. Based upon the 16 basic desires theory of personality, the current study examined the motives of 178 senior high school (gymnasium) students (mean age = 17.6, range = 16-20) from Finland, using the Reiss School Motivation Profile. In structural equation models that controlled for gender and age, intellectual curiosity was positively associated with achievement, whereas the family motive was negatively associated with achievement. Boys had a higher intellectual curiosity and a lower family motive than girls. The physical activity motive had a significant negative interaction with intellectual curiosity, such that youth with higher intellectual curiosity had the strongest achievement when their physical activity motive was lower. This suggests that adolescents with a strong desire for exercise may have some difficulty in selective high schools that require rigorous study and long hours of sitting, even when they enjoy learning. Implications for motivational theory, education research, physical education for promoting fitness, and school psychology practice are discussed.
To examine how gradients in socioeconomic status (SES) impact US children's reading and math ability at kindergarten entry and determine the contributions of family background, health, home learning, parenting, and early education factors to those gradients.
Analysis of 6600 children with cognitive assessments at kindergarten entry from the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Birth Cohort Study. A composite SES measure based on parent's occupation, education, and income was divided into quintiles. Wald F tests assessed bivariate associations between SES and child's cognitive ability and candidate explanatory variables. A decomposition methodology examined mediators of early cognitive gradients.
Average reading percentile rankings increased from 34 to 67 across SES quintiles and math from 33 to 70. Children in lower SES quintiles had younger mothers, less frequent parent reading, less home computer use (27%-84%), and fewer books at home (26-114). Parent's supportive interactions, expectations for their child to earn a college degree (57%-96%), and child's preschool attendance (64%-89%) increased across quintiles. Candidate explanatory factors explained just over half the gradients, with family background factors explaining 8% to 13%, health factors 4% to 6%, home learning environment 18%, parenting style/beliefs 14% to 15%, and early education 6% to 7% of the gaps between the lowest versus highest quintiles in reading and math.
Steep social gradients in cognitive outcomes at kindergarten are due to many factors. Findings suggest policies targeting levels of socioeconomic inequality and a range of early childhood interventions are needed to address these disparities.
Copyright © 2015 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Research has established the importance of early socioeconomic advantage and disadvantage for understanding later life outcomes, but less is known about change in the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and child development within the period of early childhood. Competing hypotheses drawn from the literature posited: (1) a stable SES-development relationship, (2) a stronger relationship in infancy than at older ages, and (3) a stronger relationship at school entry than at younger ages. Using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (2001–2007), we followed 8600 children from infancy through kindergarten entry to model change over time in the relationship between socioeconomic status and cognitive and behavioral development. The unexpected main finding was that the relationships between three socioeconomic measures (household income, assets, and maternal educational attainment) strengthened from infancy through age 4 or 4½, then weakened slightly until the start of kindergarten. Indirect evidence suggested preschool education as one possible explanation. We argue for researchers to expand the school transition concept to include the now widespread prekindergarten year, as well as for attention to psychological and physiological developmental factors that may shape the relationship between SES and cognitive and behavioral development throughout early childhood.
This paper proposes a new theoretical model of curiosity that incorporates the neuroscience of “wanting” and “liking”, which are two systems hypothesised to underlie motivation and affective experience for a broad class of appetites. In developing the new model, the paper discusses empirical and theoretical limitations inherent to drive and optimal arousal theories of curiosity, and evaluates these models in relation to Litman and Jimerson's (2004) recently developed interest-deprivation (I/D) theory of curiosity. A detailed discussion of the I/D model and its relationship to the neuroscience of wanting and liking is provided, and an integrative I/D/wanting-liking model is proposed, with the aim of clarifying the complex nature of curiosity as an emotional-motivational state, and to shed light on the different ways in which acquiring knowledge can be pleasurable.
Recent studies suggest that children born at late preterm (34-36 weeks gestation) and early term (37-38 weeks) may have poorer developmental outcomes than children born at full term (39-41 weeks). We examined how gestational age is related to cognitive ability in early childhood using the UK Millennium Cohort Study.
Cognitive development was assessed using Bracken School Readiness Assessment at age 3 years, British Ability Scales II at ages 3, 5 and 7 years and Progress in Mathematics at age 7 years. Sample size varied according to outcome between 12 163 and 14 027. Each gestational age group was compared with the full-term group using differences in z-scores and risk ratios for scoring more than -1 SD below the mean.
Children born at <32 weeks gestation scored lower (P < 0.05) than the full-term group on all scales with unadjusted z-score differences ranging between -0.8 to -0.2 SD. In all groups, there was an increased risk (P < 0.05) of scoring less than -1 SD below the mean compared with the full-term group for some of the tests: those born at < 32 weeks had a 40-140% increased risk in seven tests, those born at 32-33 weeks had a 60-80% increased risk in three tests, those born at 34-36 weeks had a 30-40% increased risk in three tests, and those born at 37-38 weeks had a 20% increased risk in two tests.
Cognitive ability is related to the entire range of gestational age, including children born at 34-36 and 37-38 weeks gestation.
The Concept of CuriosityA Framework for Factors that Support CuriosityElaborating the Framework for Curiosity Supportive FactorsCuriosity InterventionsConclusion
An imbalance exists between the role of curiosity as a motivational force in nearly all human endeavors and the lack of scientific attention given to the topic. In recent years, however, there has been a proliferation of concepts that capture the essence of curiosity-recognizing, seeking out, and showing a preference for the new. In this chapter, we combine this work to address the nature of curiosity, where it fits in the larger scheme of positive emotions, the advantages of being curious in social relationships, links between curiosity and elements of well-being, and how it has been used in interventions to improve people's quality of life. Our emphasis is on methodologically sophisticated findings that show how curiosity operates in the laboratory and everyday life, and how, under certain conditions, curiosity can be a profound source of strength or a liability. People who are regularly curious and willing to embrace the novelty, uncertainty, and challenges that are inevitable as we navigate the shoals of everyday life are at an advantage in creating a fulfilling existence compared with their less curious peers. Our brief review is designed to bring further attention to this neglected, underappreciated, human universal.
In this chapter, we discuss the construct of effortful control and review literature relevant to its development and significance for optimal development in childhood. After considering its definition and links of the construct to that of emotion-related regulation, we review literature on the emergence of effortful control in childhood and its relations to constructs such as emotionality, compliance, delay of gratification, moral development, empathy, adjustment, social competence, and cognitive and academic performance. Finally, we review literature on the socialization of effortful control, especially in the family. The literature reviewed is consistent with the perspective that effortful control is linked to children's emerging social competence, adjustment, and morality. In addition, although effortful control is based in temperament and has a hereditary basis, environmental influences likely contribute to its development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Research on curiosity has undergone 2 waves of intense activity. The 1st, in the 1960s, focused mainly on curiosity's psychological underpinnings. The 2nd, in the 1970s and 1980s, was characterized by attempts to measure curiosity and assess its dimensionality. This article reviews these contributions with a concentration on the 1st wave. It is argued that theoretical accounts of curiosity proposed during the 1st period fell short in 2 areas: They did not offer an adequate explanation for why people voluntarily seek out curiosity, and they failed to delineate situational determinants of curiosity. Furthermore, these accounts did not draw attention to, and thus did not explain, certain salient characteristics of curiosity: its intensity, transience, association with impulsivity, and tendency to disappoint when satisfied. A new account of curiosity is offered that attempts to address these shortcomings. The new account interprets curiosity as a form of cognitively induced deprivation that arises from the perception of a gap in knowledge or understanding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The overall issue of assessment during early childhood, and its relation to school
readiness and other decisions, is currently widely debated. Expanding early childhood
education and child care enrollments, better scientific knowledge about early
childhood development, and decisions about public spending, necessitate careful
consideration of which assessment tools to use, as well as why and when to use them.
More specifically, the disconnection between the importance of social and emotional
domains of development, and their status within educational programming and assessment,
has long been lamented. The last several years have, however, witnessed a
blossoming of attention to these areas during early childhood, as crucial for both concurrent
and later well-being and mental health, as well as learning and academic success.
Teachers view children’s “readiness to learn” and “teachability” as marked by
positive emotional expressiveness, enthusiasm, and ability to regulate emotions and
behaviors. Based on these assertions, I suggest a battery of preschool social–emotional
outcome measures, tapping several constructs central to emotional and social
competence theory, specifically emotional expression, emotion regulation, emotion
knowledge, social problem solving, and positive and negative social behavior.
Children's early approaches to learning (ATL) enhance their adaptation to the demands they experience with the start of formal schooling. The current study uses individual growth modeling to investigate whether children's early ATL, which includes persistence, emotion regulation, and attentiveness, explain individual differences in their academic trajectories during elementary school. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study - Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), the present investigation examined the association between ATL at kindergarten entry and trajectories of reading and math achievement across 6 waves of data from kindergarten, 1st, 3rd, and 5th grade (n = 10,666). The current study found a positive link between early ATL and individual trajectories of reading and math performance. Overall, children's early ATL was equally beneficial for children regardless of their race/ethnicity and dimensions of their socioeconomic background. However, links between early ATL and academic trajectories differed by their gender and initial levels of math and reading achievement.
To assess the relative effects and the impact of perinatal and sociodemographic risk factors on long-term morbidity within a total birth population in Florida.
School records for 339 171 children entering kindergarten in Florida public schools in the 1992-1993, 1993-1994, or 1994-1995 academic years were matched with Florida birth records from 1985 to 1990. Effects on long-term morbidity were assessed through a multivariate analysis of an educational outcome variable, defined as placement into 9 mutually exclusive categories in kindergarten. Of those categories, 7 were special education (SE) classifications determined by statewide standardized eligibility criteria, 1 was academic problems, and the reference category was regular classroom. Generalized logistic regression was used to simultaneously estimate the odds of placement in SE and academic problems. The impact of all risk factors was assessed via estimated attributable excess/deficit numbers, based on the multivariate analysis.
Educational outcome was significantly influenced by both perinatal and sociodemographic factors. Perinatal factors had greater adverse effects on the most severe SE types, with birth weight <1000 g having the greatest effect. Sociodemographic predictors had greater effects on the mild educational disabilities. Because of their greater prevalence, the impact attributable to each of the factors (poverty, male gender, low maternal education, or non-white race) was between 5 and 10 times greater than that of low birth weight and >10 times greater than that of very low birth weight, presence of a congenital anomaly, or prenatal care.
Results are consistent with the hypothesis that adverse perinatal conditions result in severe educational disabilities, whereas less severe outcomes are influenced by sociodemographic factors. Overall, sociodemographic factors have a greater total impact on adverse educational outcomes than perinatal factors.
This study examined the role of self-regulation in emerging academic ability in one hundred and forty-one 3- to 5-year-old children from low-income homes. Measures of effortful control, false belief understanding, and the inhibitory control and attention-shifting aspects of executive function in preschool were related to measures of math and literacy ability in kindergarten. Results indicated that the various aspects of child self-regulation accounted for unique variance in the academic outcomes independent of general intelligence and that the inhibitory control aspect of executive function was a prominent correlate of both early math and reading ability. Findings suggest that curricula designed to improve self-regulation skills as well as enhance early academic abilities may be most effective in helping children succeed in school.
Using 6 longitudinal data sets, the authors estimate links between three key elements of school readiness--school-entry academic, attention, and socioemotional skills--and later school reading and math achievement. In an effort to isolate the effects of these school-entry skills, the authors ensured that most of their regression models control for cognitive, attention, and socioemotional skills measured prior to school entry, as well as a host of family background measures. Across all 6 studies, the strongest predictors of later achievement are school-entry math, reading, and attention skills. A meta-analysis of the results shows that early math skills have the greatest predictive power, followed by reading and then attention skills. By contrast, measures of socioemotional behaviors, including internalizing and externalizing problems and social skills, were generally insignificant predictors of later academic performance, even among children with relatively high levels of problem behavior. Patterns of association were similar for boys and girls and for children from high and low socioeconomic backgrounds.
Cognitive control skills important for success in school and life are amenable to improvement in at-risk preschoolers without costly interventions.
School readiness includes the readiness of the individual child, the school's readiness for children, and the ability of the family and community to support optimal early child development. It is the responsibility of schools to be ready for all children at all levels of readiness. Children's readiness for kindergarten should become an outcome measure for community-based programs, rather than an exclusion criterion at the beginning of the formal educational experience. Our new knowledge of early brain and child development has revealed that modifiable factors in a child's early experience can greatly affect that child's learning trajectory. Many US children enter kindergarten with limitations in their social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development that might have been significantly diminished or eliminated through early identification of and attention to child and family needs. Pediatricians have a role in promoting school readiness for all children, beginning at birth, through their practices and advocacy. The American Academy of Pediatrics affords pediatricians many opportunities to promote the physical, social-emotional, and educational health of young children, with other advocacy groups. This technical report supports American Academy of Pediatrics policy statements "Quality Early Education and Child Care From Birth to Kindergarten" and "The Inappropriate Use of School 'Readiness' Tests."
This paper examines interrelations between biological and social influences on the development of self-regulation in young children and considers implications of these interrelations for the promotion of self-regulation and positive adaptation to school. Emotional development and processes of emotion regulation are seen as influencing and being influenced by the development of executive cognitive functions, including working memory, inhibitory control, and mental flexibility important for the effortful regulation of attention and behavior. Developing self-regulation is further understood to reflect an emerging balance between processes of emotional arousal and cognitive regulation. Early childhood educational programs that effectively link emotional and motivational arousal with activities designed to exercise and promote executive functions can be effective in enhancing self-regulation, school readiness, and school success.
This study investigated the relationship of kindergarten teachers' ratings of their students' 21st century skills (college readiness skills) with students' behavioral and academic performance. Teachers rated the frequency that their students (n = 579) demonstrated persistence, curiosity, affective, and cognitive (e.g., critical thinking) behaviors within their classrooms via the Human Behavior Rating Scale: Brief (HBRS: Brief, a teacher rating scale. The relationship of the HBRS: Brief teachers' ratings was compared with data the school annually collected (behavioral ratings, academic performance, student office discipline referrals [ODRs], and absences). Hierarchical linear modeling indicated that teachers' ratings of students' persistence and cognition behaviors were significantly associated with students' academic performance. Teachers' persistence, curiosity, and externalizing affect ratings were predictive of behavioral ratings and teachers' externalizing affect ratings were significantly associated with ODRs. The results support the efficacy of investigating teacher perceptions of students' 21st century skills with kindergarteners.
Researchers and the general public have become increasingly intrigued by the roles that systematic tendencies toward thinking, feeling, and behaving might play in academic achievement. Some measures of constructs belonging to this group have been well studied in genetics and psychometrics, while much less is known about measures of other such constructs. The current study focuses on 7 character traits prominently featured in influential intervention-oriented and/or socialization theories of academic achievement: grit, intellectual curiosity, intellectual self-concept, mastery orientation, educational value, intelligence mindset, and test motivation. In a population-based sample of 811 school-aged twins and triplets from the Texas Twin Project, we tested (a) how each measure relates to indices of the Big Five personality traits, (b) how the measures relate to one another, (c) the extent to which each measure is associated with genetic and environmental influences and whether such influences operate through common dimensions of individual differences, and (d) the extent to which genetic and environmental factors mediate the relations between fluid intelligence, character measures, verbal knowledge, and academic achievement. We find moderate relations among the measures that can be captured by a highly heritable common dimension representing a mixture of Openness and Conscientiousness. Moreover, genetically influenced variance in the character measures is associated with multiple measures of verbal knowledge and academic achievement, even after controlling for fluid intelligence. In contrast, environmentally influenced variance in character is largely unrelated to knowledge and achievement outcomes. We propose that character measures popularly used in education may be best conceptualized as indexing facets of personality that are of particular relevance to academic achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record
Early Childhood Longitudinal-Birth Cohort data were used to examine the extent to which preschool and kindergarten teachers aligned in their beliefs regarding the importance of school competencies at kindergarten entry, whether misalignment in beliefs predicted academic and sociobehavioral adjustment in kindergarten, and if relations were moderated by children's socioeconomic status. Preschool and kindergarten teachers rated the importance of 12 skills categorized into domains of academic, self-regulatory, and interpersonal competence. In the fall of kindergarten, children were directly assessed on reading and math skills, and kindergarten teachers rated children's approaches to learning, disruptive behavior, and social behavior. Findings revealed (a) misalignment was greatest for teachers’ beliefs about the importance of academic competence (b) greater misalignment in beliefs pertaining to all three domains of competence predicted poorer ratings of approaches to learning, social skills, and lower math achievement, and (c) children from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds were more susceptible to the negative influence of misalignment, across adjustment outcomes, compared to their more-advantaged peers. Results are discussed in relation to efforts aimed at promoting alignment within children's early educational contexts.
Abstract— This article reviews the literature on self‐regulation and the development of school readiness and academic competence in early childhood. It focuses on relations between the development of cognitive aspects of regulation—referred to as executive functions and defined as abilities used to regulate information and to organize thinking in goal‐directed activities—and the development of reactivity and regulation in stimulus‐driven emotion, attention, and physiological stress response systems. It examines a bidirectional model of cognition–emotion interaction in the development of self‐regulation in which top‐down executive control of thought and behavior develops in reciprocal and interactive relation to bottom‐up influences of emotion and stress reactivity. The bidirectional model is examined within the context of innovative preschool interventions designed to promote school readiness by promoting the development of self‐regulation.
This paper presents a dynamic, ecologically informed approach to conceptualizing and studying the transition to formal schooling. This perspective acknowledges that early school transitions play an important role in later school success; theorizes that a full understanding of child competence must examine the influence of the relationships among child characteristics and home, school, peer, family, and neighborhood contexts; and, most importantly, examines how these relationships change over time. This approach recommends that future policy, practice, and research be based on the following three premises. First, the transition to school must be conceptualized in terms of relationships between children and their surrounding contexts, such as schools, peers, families, and neighborhoods. Second, the measurement of children's readiness for school must acknowledge the combined influence of school, home, peers, and neighborhood contexts, the relationship among such contexts, and their direct and indirect effects on children. Third, and most specific to this paper, the examination of this transition period must address how contexts and relationships change over time, and how change and stability in these relationships form key aspects of children's transition to school. Ultimately, research informed by these principles may advise policy and practice on transition to school in normative and high-risk populations.
Research Findings: This study analyzed the school readiness beliefs of parents of 452 children from public pre-kindergarten and the relations of these beliefs to socioeconomic status and children's readiness skills. Parents conceived readiness largely in terms of the ability to name objects, letters, or numbers, but few included inferential skills. Readiness beliefs were related not to socioeconomic status but to ethnicity. Readiness beliefs about the importance of independence, social competence, nominal knowledge, and inferential skills were related in expected ways to children's skills. Practice or Policy: Infrequent inclusion of inferential skills among parents' readiness beliefs may not bode well for children. Informational programs for parents about the critical role of higher order cognitive skills and ways to promote them are needed.
Motivational interviewing has become widely adopted as a counseling style for promoting behavior change; however, as yet it lacks a coherent theoretical framework for understanding its processes and efficacy. This article proposes that self-determination theory (SDT) can offer such a framework. The principles of motivational interviewing and SDT are outlined and the parallels between them are drawn out. We show how both motivational interviewing and SDT are based on the assumption that humans have an innate tendency for personal growth toward psychological integration, and that motivational interviewing provides the social-environmental facilitating factors suggested by SDT to promote this tendency. We propose that adopting an SDT perspective could help in furthering our understanding of the psychological processes involved in motivational interviewing.
The extent to which two measures of epistemic curiosity (EC), the Epistemic Curiosity Scale (ECS; Litman & Spielberger, 2003) and the curiosity as a Feeling-of-Deprivation Scale (CFDS; Litman & Jimerson, 2004), differentiated between interest (I) and deprivation (D) type curiosity was examined in four studies. In studies 1 (N=725) and 2 (N=658), exploratory factor analyses of the ECS and CFDS subscales yielded two factors; the first (I-type) involved pleasure associated with discovering new ideas, while the second (D-type) emphasized spending time and effort to acquire a specific answer or solution. In study 3 (N=762), confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that a 2-factor model comprised of the I- and D-type curiosity items identified in study 2 had the best fit. In study 4 (N=515), correlations between revised I- and D-type measures and different learning goals were evaluated. As hypothesized, the I-EC scale correlated with mastery-oriented learning, whereas the D-EC scale was related to failure-avoidance and success-orientation. The results suggest that I-EC is concerned with stimulating positive affect, diversive exploration, learning something completely new and mastery-oriented learning; D-EC involves the reduction of uncertainty, specific exploration, acquiring information that is missing from an existing knowledge-set and performance-oriented learning.
AN INVESTIGATION WAS CONDUCTED TO DETERMINE A DEFINITION OF CURIOSITY THAT WOULD HELP IDENTIFY PERSONALITY PATTERNS OF CHILDREN WHO ARE MOST LIKELY TO BE EITHER HIGH OR LOW IN CURIOSITY. DATA COLLECTED IN EARLIER STUDIES WERE FACTOR ANALYZED TO IDENTIFY THE PERSONAL AND SOCIAL VARIABLES THAT DIFFERENTIATE CHILDREN HIGH IN CURIOSITY FROM THOSE LOW IN CURIOSITY. SEVERAL KINDS OF MEASURING INSTRUMENTS WERE USED TO DETERMINE HIGH AND LOW CURIOSITY BOYS AND HIGH AND LOW CURIOSITY GIRLS, AND TO MEASURE VARIABLES THAT SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENTIATE AMONG THOSE GROUPS. THESE MEASURES WERE TEACHER JUDGEMENT OF CURIOSITY, PEER JUDGEMENT OF CURIOSITY, "ABOUT MYSELF" FOR SELF-RATING OF CURIOSITY, LORGE-THORNDIKE INTELLIGENCE TESTS, THE CALIFORNIA TEST OF PERSONALITY, A SOCIAL DISTANCE SCALE CALLED "OTHER PEOPLE TEST," THE BEHAVIOR PREFERENCE RECORD, THE CHILDREN'S PERSONALITY QUESTIONNAIRE, THE WORD ASSOCIATION TEST (CREATIVITY), THE CASSEL GROUP LEVEL OF ASPIRATION TEST, PEER JUDGMENT OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, THE INSTITUTE OF CHILD STUDY SECURITY TEST, THE INTOLERANCE OF AMBIGUITY SCALE, THE SOCIAL ATTITUDES SCALE, DESCRIPTIVE WORDS (MORALITY), AND THE SITUATIONAL INTERPRETATION EXPERIMENT. FACTORS IDENTIFIED BY THE ANALYSIS WERE DESCRIBED IN RELATION TO EACH OF THE FOUR GROUPS STUDIED. FROM THE RESULTS, THE AUTHOR CONCLUDED THAT THERE ARE PERSONAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS THAT DIFFERENTIATE THESE FOUR GROUPS, AND THAT, ALTHOUGH CURIOSITY AS A TERM HAD NOT BEEN DEFINED, THE BEHAVIOR OF THOSE WHO SHOW DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF CURIOSITY WAS SET FORTH MORE CLEARLY THAN IT HAD BEEN BEFORE. (AL)
Kindergarten Scientists
Becoming a scientist takes many years of training … or so it seems. It requires learning how to acquire data, to incorporate it into hypotheses, and then to test those hypotheses against newly acquired data; it requires learning how to think critically and to apply statistical analysis. Gopnik (p. 1623 ) reviews recent cognitive development findings that demonstrate how preschoolers act as young scientists in refining their intuitive representations of the world as they explore reality.
The relationship between motivation and academic success has been better established with older children and adults than with younger children. As part of a larger project, the purpose of this study was to examine the relation-ship between classroom motivation and academic achievement in young elementary-school-aged children. The participants were 122 first-grade and 129 third-grade children from a mid-sized city in the southern United States. The findings from the current study were consistent with previous research in that higher levels of mastery motivation and judgment motivation were found to be related to higher math and reading grades in third graders. However, higher levels of mastery motivation, not judgment motivation, were related to higher math and reading grades in first graders.
• This work, a second edition of which has very kindly been requested, was followed by La Construction du réel chez l'enfant and was to have been completed by a study of the genesis of imitation in the child. The latter piece of research, whose publication we have postponed because it is so closely connected with the analysis of play and representational symbolism, appeared in 1945, inserted in a third work, La formation du symbole chez l'enfant. Together these three works form one entity dedicated to the beginnings of intelligence, that is to say, to the various manifestations of sensorimotor intelligence and to the most elementary forms of expression. The theses developed in this volume, which concern in particular the formation of the sensorimotor schemata and the mechanism of mental assimilation, have given rise to much discussion which pleases us and prompts us to thank both our opponents and our sympathizers for their kind interest in our work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This prospective study applied self-determination theory to investigate the effects of students' course-specific self-regulation and their perceptions of their instructors' autonomy support on adjustment and academic performance in a college-level organic chemistry course. The study revealed that: (1) students' reports of entering the course for relatively autonomous (vs. controlled) reasons predicted higher perceived competence and interest/enjoyment and lower anxiety and grade-focused performance goals during the course, and were related to whether or not the students dropped the course; and (2) students' perceptions of their instructors' autonomy support predicted increases in autonomous self-regulation, perceived competence, and interest/enjoyment, and decreases in anxiety over the semester. The change in autonomous self-regulation in turn predicted students' performance in the course. Further, instructor autonomy support also predicted course performance directly, although differences in the initial level of students' autonomous self-regulation moderated that effect, with autonomy support relating strongly to academic performance for students initially low in autonomous self-regulation but not for students initially high in autonomous self-regulation. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed84:740–756, 2000.
Children enter kindergarten with disparate rudimentary reading and mathematics skills; capabilities for paying attention, sitting still and making friends; mental health; and inclinations for aggressive behavior. The role of these characteristics in producing fifth-grade school achievement is the subject of this paper. We find considerable impacts for school-entry academic skills but, with the exception of a kindergartener's capacity to pay attention, virtually no impacts for the collection of socioemotional skills. This finding holds both for the overall sample and for subgroups defined by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. The most powerful pre-school avenue for boosting fifth-grade achievement appears to be improving the basic academic skills of low-achieving children prior to kindergarten entry.