Rational and operationalized views of science and what it means for teachers and students to know and enact legitimate science practices have dominated science education research for many decades (Fusco and Barton in "J Res Sci Teach" 38(3):337-354, 2001. doi: 10.1002/1098-2736(200103)38:3<337::AID-TEA1009>3.0.CO;2-0). Michalinos…

In 2 cross-lagged, longitudinal studies we contrasted parental talk about want in a single context versus multiple contexts. Study 1 examined thirty-two 2 year olds, with mothers describing pictures to children. Mothers could use want in zero, one, or multiple contexts. Children whose mothers used want in multiple contexts experienced a…

The present commentary considers the theoretical and applied implications of Froh, Bono, and colleagues' benefit-appraisals intervention to promote gratitude among youth. First, we discuss the developmental competencies that children need to master before they can benefit from this intervention. The target curriculum was successful among 8- to…

We argue that learning science requires children to move from perceptually based representations to more abstract conceptual representations and to understand that appearance may sometimes deceive us and that the same phenomenon in the world can have more than one representation when seen from different perspectives. We also argue that the…

This cross-sectional study investigated the use of four verbal indices of social knowledge (personal pronouns, verb conjugations, people words and mental state language) and their concurrent relations in a sample of 287 Italian-speaking children between 18 and 36 months. Results showed that the production of all indices increased with age. Mental…

Over the past two decades, two heavily funded initiatives of the Federal government of Australia have been founded on two very different and seemingly conflicting (if not antithetical) visions of education. The first, the Australian Values Education Program (AVEP, 2003-2010) enshrines what may be called an 'embedded values' vision of education;…

One of the major goals of the English Language Arts is to teach students to read, understand, and write narratives. This report examines the ways in which the skills that support narrative develop during the school years, outlines a model of narrative as a "key practice" in which the ability to model social situations supports narrative…

The study seeks to understand the relation between preschool children's mode of participation and negotiation strategies during play and their theory of mind (ToM) development in the Hong Kong context. Forty-two 5-year-old children were recruited. Their emotional and cognitive ToMs were assessed along with expressive language ability. Children's…

This is the first comprehensive clinical introduction to using a time-limited mentalizing approach for working with children, ages 5 to 12, who experience emotional and behavioral problems, including anxiety, depression, and relational difficulties. Mentalization-based treatment (MBT) promotes a child's ability to make sense of their own mind, and…

Quality preschool programs that develop the whole child through age-appropriate socioemotional and cognitive skill-building hold promise for significantly improving child outcomes. However, preschool programs tend to either be teacher-led and didactic, or else to lack academic content. One preschool model that involves both child-directed, freely…

Whenever the author explains the brain to her second-grade students, the look on their faces is one of simultaneous fascination and relief. What caught her off guard was the relief. In retrospect, it makes pure sense. Of course it was a relief for them to realize that they could affect their brains and its abilities--that nothing was set in stone.…

How children understand the concepts of teaching and learning is inherently underpinned by their mental state understanding and critical to the successful transition to formal schooling. Knowledge is a private representational mental state; learning is a knowledge change process that can be either intentional or not; and teaching is an intentional…

Little is known about the mechanisms underlying a ubiquitous behavior in preschoolers, help-seeking. We tested the hypothesis that preschoolers' awareness of their own uncertainty is associated with help-seeking. Three-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (N = 125) completed a perceptual identification task twice: once independently and once when they could…

Understanding the underpinnings of social responsiveness and theory of mind (ToM) will enhance our knowledge of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We hypothesize that higher-order relational reasoning (higher-order RR: reasoning necessitating integration of relationships among multiple variables) is necessary but not sufficient for ToM, and that…

Executive functions (EFs) develop rapidly in preschoolers and lay an important foundation for school readiness. One potential method of supporting EF development is through mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). Whereas studies with older children and adults have supported this approach, research with young children has been more limited. In the…