Examines developments in social and cultural approaches to understanding child development. Focuses on the issue of narrative understanding as an important concept in discussions of how children learn. Offers a rationale for considering narrative understanding as a key aspect of meaning-making and discusses implications for classroom practice.…

This article explains a practical strategy for dealing with social emotional problems in the inclusive classroom environment. The potential need for bibliotherapy is introduced by discussing how role boundaries of teachers are changing and how teachers may take on a range of roles in their classrooms. An example of a social emotional scenario…

This study examined the associations between maternal emotion framing and mother--child relationship quality and children's emotional and social competence. Sixty-one mothers and their preschool children (33 boys) completed dyadic and individual measures. Observations were made of mother--child synchrony and maternal emotion framing. Children's…

According to autobiographical memory theorists, past event conversations provide children with a framework for evaluating and connecting past events into a coherent autobiography (R. Fivush, 1994; K. Nelson, 1993; M. K. Welch-Ross, 1995). Two studies were conducted to empirically examine the association between past event conversation style and an…

Educators of young children know how important children's social and emotional development is, not only in terms of developing empathy, compassion, friendships, confidence and the like, but also as an essential component of cognitive growth. As children gain skills in the social/emotional domain, they build language and problem-solving skills, as…

This paper reviews how cascading levels of contextual influences, starting with family factors and extending to neighborhood and school factors, can affect children's behavioral and emotional development. The ability of contextual factors to trigger or to attenuate children's underlying temperament and biological risk factors is emphasized.…

One hundred and sixty-five Year 7 (11-12 years old) pupils in co-educational schools in England participated in a study investigating the effects of mixed gender working on attitudinal and social measures. Eighty-two children working in mixed-gender groups and 83 control children working mainly in single-gender groups were tested on a variety of…

Experience and anecdotes have led many people to believe that homeschool parents were either move-to-the-country anarchist goat-herders, or right-wing Bible-thumpers, and their children were either mathematically-limited, due to Mama's fear of math, or child prodigies in rocket-science who were unthinkably socially hindered. Although one can find…

Recent years have seen the emergence of accounts of the origins of the Disorganized attachment relationship in early mother-infant interaction, each building on the pioneering work of Main and Hesse--dysfunctional emotional processes figure prominently in all these accounts. This paper applies a framework based on two complementary theories of…

Over the last 15 years, the role of emotions in children's peer relations has received greater attention. The purpose of the meta-analytic review was to determine the magnitude of the relation between negative emotionality (NE) and positive emotionality (PE) and social status. Based on 54 independent samples, the overall effect size for the…

The ability to form secure attachments during early childhood promotes a lifetime of emotional health. This article describes emotional milestones for babies (i.e., activities that promote self-comfort and self-control), as well as for toddlers. In the case of toddlers, a profound emotional milestone that is accomplished during the first year is…

Proficiency in problem solving is an important outcome in early childhood necessary for cognitive and emotional development. The development of an individual growth and development indicator of problem solving for children 1 to 4 years of age is described. Based on the general outcome measurement approach (Deno, 1997), the measure is intended for…

The main goal of this research was to assess whether it is possible to help children develop their general understanding of emotions. Thirty-six nine-year-old children divided in two groups were examined using a pre-test/train/post-test design. The emotion understanding of the two groups was measured in the pre- and post-test phases using the Test…

Select research and practice issues that merit further attention are described. Specifically, we argue that the pathways for profitable research include studies of normative development, assessment and diagnostic considerations, the role of parents, and the ways to optimize the conduct and evaluation of treatment. At present, the field is too…

Background: This study examines the extent to which a random sample of adults with intellectual disabilities possess the component skills necessary to undergo cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT). Method: Seventy-two individuals underwent a range of assessments, including measures of language ability, ability to identify and to label emotions,…