Jennifer A. Vu

Children's representations of relationships with mothers, teachers, and friends, and associations with social competence

This study describes the use of story stems in order to determine childrens representations of relationships with mothers, teachers, and friends, and how these representations are related to mother- and teacher-rated social competence. Thirty preschool-aged children were administered the story stem tasks featuring three different interactional partners, which were then coded for quality of the portrayed relationship. Mothers and teachers were also asked to rate childrens social competence. Findings suggest that children generally have similar, but not identical, working models of their relationships with mothers and teachers which are related to internal working models of their relationships with friends. Furthermore, elements of childrens narratives about teachers and friends were related to teachers ratings of childrens social competence. Findings from this study demonstrate the dynamic and interactive nature of childrens representations of relationships with their mothers, teachers, and friends.

Social Network Profiles of Children in Early Elementary School Classrooms

This study characterized the social network roles and peer relationship features of early elementary school-age children from kindergarten to 2nd grade. Children were asked to identify who they liked and did not like to play with and peer groups who played together from their classroom. Consistent with the literature, we found similar patterns for outward friendship nominations and friendship reciprocity by group centrality status. However, the authors found more complex associations between childrens gender, grade level, and centrality status on the number of received nominations, rejections, and total number of connections. These results shed light on the multifaceted nature of childrens peer relationships at school.

Children’s Responses to Different Types of Teacher Involvement During Free Play

This qualitative study uses secondary data from videos of 11 teachers in community childcare settings to explore the different roles that teachers use to facilitate play and the way children respond to teachers’ behaviours within these roles. Results suggest that specific teacher behaviours within the roles they adopt elicit three types of children’s responses: ignore/reject, evaluative, and acceptance behaviours. The co- player and play leader roles were often associated with children’s acceptance behaviours and were considered more appropriate for teachers to support children’s development.

Meaningful Family Engagement in Early Care and Education Programs: The Role of Home Visits in Promoting Positive Parent-Child Interaction

Abstract Family engagement is a central tenet of high-quality early education practice. However, the ways in which programs interact with families have varied significantly over time and in relationship to program type. This chapter extends traditional notions of family involvement by emphasizing the potential of early care and education programs to effectively support parents and other primary caregivers in enhancing daily interactions with their children. Specifically, home visits are described as an important mechanism to influence parent-child interaction particularly when intentional, evidence-based curricula are employed. In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on developing and implementing such home visiting models. In this chapter, we describe a specific example of the integration of the Promoting First Relationships (PFR) parent-child interaction curriculum (Kelly, Zuckerman, Sandoval, & Buehlman, 2008) into home visits in both home and center-based Early Head Start practice. Implementation aspects for enhancing existing family engagement strategies with an intentional home visiting curriculum are discussed with recommendations for future programming and research.