ERA Abstracts

SELECTED ABSTRACTS from Russian educational journals, September 2017.

Modern research on early childhood education is now dominated by articles and books in the English language. It stands to reason that interesting research outcomes are published in other languages and domains as well. They may be culturally biased, but most of the time open for reinterpretation for a better understanding of one's own culture and issues in early childhood education.

Below we present a small sample (six abstracts) from Russian research, published in different peer-reviewed educational journals, addressing issues in early childhood education, which we think may be useful for broadening and deepening the understandings of early childhood development in scholars and practitioners. Due to their nature, abstracts cannot give detailed conceptual frameworks or methodological details, but in our view the phenomena described may enrich readers’ imagination in their own search for solutions and ways for educational improvements in early childhood education.

The topics discussed in the six abstracts are diverse at first sight, but they express a common ambition in Russian research in the domain of early childhood education and care. Each of the articles addresses an aspect of a common sociocultural need to improve the quality of early childhood education, both in schools and at home. They address further needs for reflection on what is needed for the improvement of early childhood education, in terms of environments, classroom interactions, new demands, and support of families.

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Remorenko, I. M., T. G. Shmis, T. N. Le Van, O. A. Shiyan, I. B. Shiyan, Y. Y. Kozmina, and E. V. Sivak. 2017. “Key Issues for the Implementation of the Federal State Educational Standard for Preschool Education According to the Results of Applying ECERS-R: ‘Moscow-36’.” Preschool Education Today, no. 2: 16–31.

The article is devoted to the results of the study of the quality of preschool education in Moscow. The basis for the study was the idea of the quality of preschool education, laid down in the Federal curriculum of preschool education and based on the cultural-historical theory of LS Vygotsky. The aim of the research was to study the existing ‘strong places’ and deficits in the preschool education of the capital. As a tool, ‘Environment rating scales’ (ECERS-R) were used. The study was conducted on a random sample of kindergartens in one of the districts of Moscow.

In the process of correlating the results of the research and the requirements of Federal curriculum of preschool education, it was found that the individualisation of the educational process, support for the initiative and independence of children, creation of a more accessible and mobile environment, optimal conditions for the development of thinking, imagination and children's creativity should become important directions in the development of the educational environment of the kindergarten.

The results of the research show that formally in the preschools, conditions for the development of teachers have been created (methodical literature is available, there are opportunities for in-service training and receiving methodological support, etc.), but these results coincide with significantly lower indicators related to educational activity of teachers, the quality of their interaction with children. Obviously, the content of in-service training for preschool teachers workers needs a serious transformation.

Chesnokova, O. B., and K. S. Tarasova. 2016. “Are All Children Ready For Competition?” Preschool Education Today, no. 6: 46–57.

The ability to compete with peers is one of the central issues in childhood socialisation because it contributes to the acquisition of social, emotional and communicative competencies in a manner that is quite unlike the child's cooperation with peers and adults. In preschool age competitive situations help to solve two different tasks – to win and to achieve advantage over others and to test oneself. In primary school age competition based on social comparison stimulates improving their insufficiently developed skills and confirm their self-esteem.

Despite the significant impact of competitions for peer relations, self-esteem and academic motivations, some primary school children are not ready to compete with peers in competitive game settings that we define as communicative situations in which individuals with different or opposite interests tend to maximise their benefits or rewards. In order to differentiate children who are not ready to compete, 203 primary school children participated in a specially organised dyadic competitive game designed on a basis of modified method of Georgiou et al. (2007). Before the game, the children were engaged in a warm-up activity. After the game we analyse children's emotional reaction to the competitive situation.

Children psychologically ready for competition demonstrate the (1) optimal type of competitive behaviour, characterised by high orientation towards the partner, an adequate response to wins and losses as unavoidable parts of competition allowing you to learn something new and enjoy the game. Children who are not psychologically ready for competition can show (2) anxiously uncertain or (3) aggressively impatient types of competitive behaviour, characterised by tendency to avoid competitive activities and insecurity or impulsiveness and pursuit of victory at any cost.

Tsukerman, G. A. 2016. “Play and Learning: How the Two Leading Activities Meet.” Kul'turno-istoricheskaya psikhologiya [Cultural-Historical Psychology] 12 (2): 4–13.

The transition from preschool to school age is a period when conceptual play may become the source of initiative and independence for a child – the very elements that learning activity lacks in its origins. The narrative plot of conceptual play helps children not yet capable of system thinking; it maintains the integrity and coherence of separate tasks given by a teacher, makes them more emotionally significant and provides new meanings for the child's actions. However, if the teacher employs play and narrative only as the powerful motivators for learning, without the conceptual content, then cognitive and learning interests would basically develop in those children who came to school with a desire for knowledge and intellectual efforts. In conceptual play the child, acting on behalf of characters representing concepts, carries out the operations necessary for the formation of these concepts. The means of actions for the characters are instructional (schemes). Basing on the reading and writing lessons in primary school, the paper shows how conceptual play helps the child to keep in mind the simultaneously and equally existing (equally right) points of view on the studied subject. This lays the foundations for the future conceptual thinking, positional in its nature as it implies the ability to hold and coordinate various aspects of conceptual contradiction. Narrative plots of conceptual play enable the child to introduce his/her own connotations into the plot of a learning play and to become a co-author of the lesson, contributing to its direction.

Vasilyeva, M., E. Laski, A. Veraksa, and C. Shen. 2016. “Development of Children's Early Understanding of Numeric Structure.” Psychology in Russia: State of the Art 9 (3): 76–94.

Understanding of the base-10 structure of multi-digit numbers is one of the critical aspects in early mathematics learning. It has been documented that children from different countries vary in their use of base-10 representations. Questions concerning potential sources of this variability have been debated for decades. One commonly posited explanation is that some languages provide explicit cues about the structure of multi-digit numbers, facilitating the development of base-10 representations. In the present study, we tested this view against an alternative view, positing that variability in children's learning of numeric structure may reflect differences in their experiences with numbers. The study examined kindergartners and first-graders from four countries: Taiwan, South Korea, the USA, and Russia. Results showed that the use of base-10 representations by American first-graders increased dramatically over the last decades, following changes in curricular guidelines. First-graders across the four countries showed some differences in performance (however, not consistent with the language account), whereas kindergartners performed comparably despite the differences in their languages. The results suggest that the nature of early math instruction may be critical for children's developing understanding of numeric structure.

Alekseeva, O. S., and I. E. Rzhanova. 2016. “The Influences of Sex and Birth Order on Differences of Parental Treatment.” Psikhologicheskie Issledovaniya 9 (50): 11.

The study examined the effects of children's birth order and sex on differential parental treatment. 302 families with two children participated in the study (N = 1208). Maternal and paternal relations with children were assessed using the technique ‘Parent–child interaction questionary’. This technique allows to obtain both parent's and children's evaluations of parent–child relationships. Analysis of parental ratings revealed that fathers demonstrated a higher level of connivance with daughters than with sons. Both parents showed higher control over the younger children, regardless of child sex. Analysis of children's ratings showed that boys evaluated higher paternal negative control than girls. Fathers were more likely than mothers to show differences in relations with children. Fathers had greater confidence in communication with young daughters, they were more inconsistent in their parenting. Younger girls from mixed-gender pairs got higher scores on the scale of a positive relationship with their fathers, than other children.

Sobkin, V. S., K. N. Skobeltsina. 2015. “Shared Activities of Parents With Their Preschool Children During Family Pastime.” Psychology in Russia: State of the Art 8 (2): 52–60.

This article studies the structure of the pastime of contemporary preschool children and the importance and prevalence of various kinds of activities that parents and their children share. The emphasis is on those features of parental behaviour that are determined by gender role (mother/father), family status (two-parent/separated family), style of parent–child relationship, and also child's gender. The work is based on data from 1936 questionnaires received from parents of preschool children (from 1.5 to 7 years old) who were attending Moscow kindergartens. The research was carried out in 41 kindergartens in 9 districts of Moscow. The survey uncovered several social-psychological features of the position parents take while organising their shared pastime with preschool children: the influence of traditional gender-role models of parental behaviour; the ‘complementary’ principle of mother's and father's social-role positions in the upbringing of a daughter; the distortion of traditional maternal behaviour in the upbringing of a son in a separated family; the reduced organisation of shared play with a child in a separated family; the influence of the style of the parent–child relationship on the participation of parents in their children's activities. The dynamics show how the parents’ position changes as their children grow older (from 1.5 years to 7 years): namely, the decrease of parents’ organisation of and participation in a preschool child's activities has a negative impact on their emotional state while interacting with the child.