Disagreement exists about how to best spark young children's motivation to learn natural science. Both curiosity and wonder are considered important motivational factors for learning during early childhood (0-8 years). This systematic literature review explores research about scientific curiosity and wonder in early childhood education and care…

Although children's school success is a parental goal in most cultures, there is wide cultural variation in the qualities that parents most wish their children to develop for that purpose. A questionnaire contained forty-one child qualities was administered to 757 parents in seven cultural communities in Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland,…

This study explores the cultural construction of "difficult" temperament in the first 2 years of life, as well as the logistical and thematic continuity across infancy and childhood in what mothers perceive as difficult. It extends earlier work regarding older children in six cultural sites: Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden,…

The seven papers in this issue address a variety of challenges that parents in several different cultural places encounter as they do their best to ensure their children's safe, happy, and successful development from infancy through middle childhood: infant sleep, developmental agendas, temperament, preschools, academic success, and learning to be…

Five studies document the validity of a new 8-item scale designed to measure "positivity," defined as the tendency to view life and experiences with a positive outlook. In the first study (N = 372), the psychometric properties of Positivity Scale (P Scale) were examined in accordance with classical test theory using a large number of…

Followership, being an understudied concept, raises fundamental questions: How did followership develop? Why do people submit into becoming followers? The developmental trajectory for the development of individual attributes is as yet, uncharted. Current study provides an overview of assessed attributes of followers, as proposed by Antelo (2010).…

Nearly all chapters in this volume are contemporary original research on personality, stress, and coping in educational contexts. The research spans primary, secondary, and tertiary education. Research participants are students and teachers. The volume brings together contributions from the United States, Australia, Canada, Italy, Scotland, and…

This study explores parental ethnotheories of children's temperament through mothers' responses to McDevitt and Carey's Behavioral Style Questionnaire (1978) for 299 children aged 3 to 8 years and interviews with their parents, in Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. We first established a standardized,…

The Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy (RESE) scale was developed to assess perceived self-efficacy in managing negative (NEG) and in expressing positive (POS) affect (G. V. Caprara & M. Gerbino, 2001). In this study of young adults, the factorial structure of the RESE scale was found to be similar in Italy, the United States, and Bolivia: In…

A total of 467 mothers of firstborn 20-month-old children from 7 countries (103 Argentine, 61 Belgian, 39 Israeli, 78 Italian, 57 Japanese, 69 Korean, and 60 US American) completed the "Jackson Personality Inventory" (JPI), measures of parenting cognitions (self-perceptions and knowledge), and a social desirability scale. Our first…

We are delighted to welcome you to the International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends (InPACT) 2016, taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, from 30 of April to 2 of May, 2016. Psychology, nowadays, offers a large range of scientific fields where it can be applied. The goal of understanding individuals and groups (mental functions and…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…