Fighting words? Joning as conflict talk and identity performance among African American preadolescents

This study examines how preadolescent African American students in Washington, D.C., used a linguistic practice called ‘joning,’ a style of verbal play similar to ritual insults, in peer interactions. Sociolinguists have focused on how children socialize each other into vernacular styles appropriate for peer group use but often assume that they disalign with social and linguistic norms for classroom behavior. Drawing from a nine‐month ethnographic study that the author conducted in an after‐school program, this article analyzes the structure and function of joning as a vernacular style of African American Vernacular English and its uses in constructing classroom identities. Joning often facilitated student learning, but it was perceived as a socially and physically risky linguistic practice because of its uses as conflict talk in the local community. Focusing on preadolescence as a key stage of language socialization, this article shows how minority students modify peer‐learned linguistic practices to pursue academic success on their own terms.     

Investigating the link between migration and civicness in Italy. Which individual and school factors matter?

This paper investigates the link between migration and civicness using data on cognitive skills and civic competences collected from a sample of 2747 eighth-graders in Italy. Contrary to the abundant evidence of migrant/native gaps in educational and occupational attainments in the country, this study finds no migrant-specific gap on civicness development. Children of immigrants achieve lower levels of civic knowledge than natives, but differences disappear once social background and, particularly, cognitive test scores are equalized across groups. Moreover, no differences are found, on average, between natives and children of immigrants with respect to institutional trust. However, at the top tail of the civic knowledge distribution, children of immigrants display less trust than natives. This result, coupled with their greater openness towards immigrants’ rights, suggests that immigrants’ children attach great importance to the inequality in rights concerning the immigrant population in the country and, as a reaction, participate more actively in the community. Insignificant or positive associations between the proportion of immigrants’ children in the classroom and natives’ civicness are found. Finally, fairness in student–teacher interactions is found to improve students’ civicness development, suggesting that, besides citizenship education, also the school climate plays a vital role in enhancing children's civic competences.     

Place attachment among children in a street situation in Pelotas,Brazil

This article explores the processes which affect street children and youths’ relationships with the place called the ‘streets’. The street as a place to live is violent and hostile. However, street dwellers aspire to see the street environment positively. In fact, being able to establish a positive relationship with the street, to become attached to it, is crucial for coping within it. In this research, longitudinal qualitative data concentrating on processes were produced time-geographically with 19 street children and youths in the Brazilian town of Pelotas. The analyses of this research reveal that attachment changes over time instead of remaining static. Examples from the streets demonstrate how the human–environment relationship is shaped by constantly changing encounters of physical, social and mental (f)actors. This article stresses the importance of individual life experiences and goals for the attachment processes and for what positively affects the attachment.     

Examples of practice: an intercultural approach to translate Romanian children’s folklore into Spanish

Due to the great number of Romanian pupils in Spanish public school, the local administration organises extra-curricular Romanian courses in order to preserve the Romanian language and culture. This is a way to contribute to build and consolidate a bicultural and bilingual profile of the young people. Besides, it is also an opportunity to align with plurilingual and pluricultural competence established by The Common European Framework of References for Languages (2002). Based on the premise that “children's literature is an intercultural instrument”, I choose as corpus the Romanian children's folklore represented by games, formula-songs, recital-stories, household words, incantations, riddles and lullabies to translate into Spanish. After the translations, Romanian children had to find similarities and differences between the Romanian and Spanish children's songs, in order to augment the knowledge about both cultures.     

关于幼儿双语教学可行性的探讨

文章主要从幼儿的语言学习能力角度分析幼儿双语教学的可行性,运用乔姆斯基的语言天生说和语言学习临界期的观点,得出儿童学习语言具有成人所不具备的优势,并引用国外学者的研究成果来进一步证实此结论.在此基础上分析了外语学习对幼儿语言、认知及社会性方面发展的促进作用以及在幼儿双语教学中应注意的问题.旨在让读者更加了解幼儿双语教学,并结合本地区在师资等教育资源方面的具体情况来实施双语教学,以促进我国幼儿双语教学的发展.     

农村低龄留守儿童现象分析与思考

针对目前农村中出现的留守儿童低龄化的新现象,笔者通过调查研究对其现状、原因进行分析,认为让留守儿童生活在一个不完整的家庭当中,错过开发智力的最佳时期,落后的传统文化将在他们身上留下烙印,指出低龄留守儿童现象是中国社会从农村社会向城市社会转变的必然产物,是中国社会转型过程中付出的代价。     

亲子关系促进工作坊--家庭社会工作的示范

和谐家庭是构建和谐社会的基础。利用团体辅导技术,专业的社会工作在微观层面帮助改善家庭亲子关系,帮助父母提高与孩子沟通技巧,实现社会工作助人自助的宗旨和目的。在校园社会内部,教职工也面临家庭亲子关系这一家庭与社会问题。本文以一个校园亲子关系促进工作坊案例,解释亲子工作坊实务工作的理论依据与相关研究,表明了社会工作专业参与建设和谐社会的价值和潜力。     

论幼儿行为心理对幼儿园建筑构思的影响

当前幼儿园建筑作为较高层次的设计,需要对方案解析、功能要求及环境品质等问题做出相应的调整,尤其不能忽略儿童行为及心理的需要,特别是针对其思想、感情和行动的影响方式。幼儿园的建筑设计和环境建设与现代幼儿行为观念的变革一脉相承。由此可见,其建筑学的处理手法蕴涵了从室内到室外可持续发展的行为理念。究其原因是行为学极大地影响了从建筑布局到结构形式的固有组织。幼儿园建筑设计的正确方向应是作为环境文脉的延续,从而使今后的研究更加明确,更具有针对性。     

从中古女性墓碑文看中古女性价值观

整个中古时期的墓碑,主要以男性之碑为主。在为数不多的女性墓碑文中,又以中、上层社会妇人之碑文为多,从这些刊录中、上层社会妇人行履的墓碑文字来看,其对墓主生前价值的肯定,多称道其孝悌与持家、治家之道,其中又主要集中于孝姑与育子两个方面,而孝姑之行其源又出于育子之行。中国孝文化多讲孝母(孝姑),从中古这些女性尤其是妇人墓碑文可窥其一斑。     

双语学习对儿童词汇意识的影响

关于双语学习对儿童词汇意识的影响,学界观点不一,解释机制多样.综述分析目前的研究发现:双语学习对儿童词汇意识的负面影响是不存在的,且仅是理论上的;尽管双语学习可能会导致双语者的词汇量减少,但是词汇意识测试中的双语劣势不是源于双语学习本身.双语学习对儿童认知的影响是正面的,尤其是有利于加工控制能力和选择注意能力等发展,从而促进了儿童词汇意识的形成和发展.