bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Evaluating the Feasibility, Effectiveness and Acceptability of an Active Play Intervention for Disadvantaged Preschool Children: A Pilot Study
Authors: Stagnitti Karen , Malakellis Mary , Kenna Rachel , Kershaw Beth , Hoare Majella , de Silva-Sanigorski Andrea 
Published: March 2019

AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN FROM DISADVANTAGED families are at increased risk of delays in acquiring fundamental movement skills, with physical inactivity and increased risk of the potential consequences of obesity. The aims of this pilot study were to: 1) assess the fundamental movement skills of disadvantaged children; 2) evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of adapting an existing parenting and child development program to incorporate additional weekly play activities (the intervention); and 3) examine the acceptability of the intervention. Children aged 1.5–5 years were assessed pre-intervention ( n = 26) and post-intervention ( n = 16) over a period of 22 weeks using the gross motor component of the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales – 2nd Edition (PDMS-2) (Folio & Fewell, 2000). Parents completed a demographic and environmental survey and those implementing the intervention were interviewed to assess the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention. Pre-intervention the children from disadvantaged families had locomotion, object manipulation and Gross Motor Quotient (GMQ) scores significantly below the norm-referenced standards of the PDMS-2 ( p < 0.05). The intervention was associated with improvements in the locomotion (8.35 to 9.5; p = 0.009), and object manipulation (8.6 to 9.6; p = 0.04) subtest scores and the GMQ scores (92.6 to 99.3; p < 0.01). The intervention was deemed feasible and acceptable by those implementing the program. Low levels of physical activity in disadvantaged communities may be related to delayed acquisition of fundamental movement skills in childhood. This pilot study raises the possibility of correcting this deficit in early childhood, and improving the potential for all children to lead an active life.
A Preliminary Exploration of Children's Physiological Arousal Levels in Regular Preschool Settings
Authors: Sajaniemi Nina , Suhonen Eira , Sims Margaret 
Published: March 2019

LEARNING NEW THINGS IS challenging. In these moments, children are functioning in the upper limits of their acquired capability: in Vygotskian terms, children are functioning in their zone of proximal development (ZPD). Acting in the ZPD is cognitively loading and stress-provoking, thus the ability to function optimally in this state of increased stress has fundamental effects on the development of learning abilities. Physiological measures of arousal have become more common and pave the way to understanding not only how children develop regulation but also the role of the environment (social and physical) in supporting that development. While cortisol has become a popular measure of arousal, it is only one component of the physiobiology of arousal. It is important to develop a more holistic understanding of arousal. Our study aimed to evaluate both cortisol and alpha-amylase responses in preschool-aged children in response to both an unusually challenging task as well as to normal early childhood activities. We have used these to develop a model linking activation of the HPA and SAM systems to children's cognitive performance, including the mediating impact of daily activities.
Warning—Television Viewing May Harm Your Child's Health: Parent Perceptions of Early Childhood Viewing Habits
Authors: Garvis Susanne , Pendergast Donna 
Published: March 2019

IN 2009, THE AUSTRALIAN Government introduced the Get Up and Grow (Commonwealth Government, 2009) guidelines for healthy eating and exercise in early childhood as one element of a range of initiatives aiming to curb childhood obesity, a problem affecting an increasing proportion of Australia children. Included in the policy recommendations are banning children from watching television until they turn two; and limiting viewing to one hour a day for those aged between two and five years. These recommendations represent a considerable shift in the reported average viewing practices for these age groups, providing an opportunity for community comment. In 2009, the article ‘Childhood policy straight out of fantasyland’ (Edgar, 2009) appeared on the Sydney Morning Herald website. The article was a critique of the Get Up and Grow recommendations. Most articles on the SMH website have an anonymous blog post attached where readers can post their comments. Data was collected from this blog, and responses where the identity of the respondent as a parent was either implicitly or explicitly stated were used and the text analysed. Six themes were generated from the data: television as an educator; television as a babysitter; television as a motivator for increasing physical exercise; policy as a challenge to parental rights; age appropriateness; and viewing standards. The responses provide insights into children's viewing habits and glimpses of the way television is used in the family household. Findings also reveal that parents accept that television programs labelled as ‘educational’ are a positive influence on learning for their child, and do not scrutinise the content beyond this assumption.
Play, Language and Social Skills of Children Attending a Play-Based Curriculum School and a Traditionally Structured Classroom Curriculum School in Low Socioeconomic Areas
Authors: Reynolds Emily , Stagnitti Karen , Kidd Evan 
Published: March 2019

Aim and Method A comparison study of four six-year-old children attending a school with a play-based curriculum and a school with a traditionally structured classroom from low socioeconomic areas was conducted in Victoria, Australia. Children's play, language and social skills were measured in February and again in August. At baseline assessment there was a combined sample of 31 children (mean age 5.5 years, SD 0.35 years; 13 females and 18 males). At follow-up there was a combined sample of 26 children (mean age 5.9 years, SD 0.35 years; 10 females, 16 males). Results There was no significant difference between the school groups in play, language, social skills, age and sex at baseline assessment. Compared to norms on a standardised assessment, all the children were beginning school with delayed play ability. At follow-up assessment, children at the play-based curriculum school had made significant gains in all areas assessed ( p values ranged from 0.000 to 0.05). Children at the school with the traditional structured classroom had made significant positive gains in use of symbols in play ( p < 0.05) and semantic language ( p < 0.05). At follow-up, there were significant differences between schools in elaborate play ( p < 0.000), semantic language ( p < 0.000), narrative language ( p < 0.01) and social connection ( p < 0.01), with children in the play-based curriculum school having significantly higher scores in play, narrative language and language and lower scores in social disconnection. Implications Children from low SES areas begin school at risk of failure as skills in play, language and social skills are delayed. The school experience increases children's skills, with children in the play-based curriculum showing significant improvements in all areas assessed. It is argued that a play-based curriculum meets children's developmental and learning needs more effectively. More research is needed to replicate these results.
Diversifying Early Years Professional Learning—One Size No Longer Fits All
Authors: Carter Margaret Anne , Fewster Caroline 
Published: March 2019

CONTROVERSY AND CONTRADICTION SURROUND the structure, content, and delivery mode of effective professional development (PD) for early years teachers. Long-held traditions of generic and short-term solution PD courses are being replaced by customised programs relevant to participants, the learning from which is reflected as new practices, processes and strategies in work settings. If the implementation of new ways of being and doing are successful in terms of student outcome, then the participants' attitude to the PD is positive and their commitment to their new and revised practices are ongoing. These PD courses concentrate on systematic efforts that go beyond session content and focus on building participants' capacity by contextualising their learnings with action research projects within work contexts. Participants' practices and commitment to change are influenced by positive changes in student outcomes. These changes then influence their perception of the worth of the PD (Guskey, 2000; 2002). In 2008, the Bond University team, led by Dr Margaret Anne Carter and Assistant Professor Caroline Fewster, provided action research-driven PD to 2,205 early childhood practitioners in the area of ‘guiding children's behaviour’. This PD program, funded by Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA), was administered by Professional Support Coordinator Queensland (PSCQ) and Workforce Council, and designed and delivered by the Bond University team. This PD was delivered statewide across 13 metropolitan, regional and remote areas of Queensland. Course duration ranged from one-,two-and three-hour sessions; and one, two and three full days. Participants committed themselves to the implementation of action research projects, transferring learnings from PD sessions specific to their own needs and circumstances into their workplace. Significant change in participants' attitudes occurred primarily after evidence was gathered of growth and development in student learning. Improvements in student behaviour influenced changes in paradigm, practices, processes and strategies—new instructional methods, revised environmental systems and structures, new materials in social behaviour curriculum. It was not the PD per se, but the successful implementation of the PD learnings that changed paradigms, resulting in new and revised practices and processes within work settings (Guskey, 2002).
A Bird in the Hand: Understanding the Trajectories of Development of Young Children and the Need for Action to Improve Outcomes
Authors: Tayler Collette , Cloney Daniel , Niklas Frank 
Published: March 2019

THE ABILITIES AND CAPABILITIES young children bring into school accrue as a result of prior family, community and early children program experience, and they assist or impede transitions and ongoing progress in the first school years. In Australia, family contexts and children's early childhood education and care (ECEC) program pathways are diverse, and processes for addressing learning and development difficulties are at the discretion of the early educators who support children within typical everyday programs. The Australian E4Kids longitudinal study directly assessed the general cognitive ability and receptive and expressive language of a sample of 2498 three- and four-year-old children and tracked their progress into the early years of school. The abilities of these preschool1 children are reported, along with associations with family background characteristics and the abilities trajectory of different sub-groups. Children who are at risk of poor outcomes as they progress toward school are the focus of this paper. Analyses address the differences between children's abilities at baseline measurement, characteristics of the participants' home environments and the trajectories of these children over three years. The findings provoke early consideration by educators of the context of children entering programs and the provision of more direct educational supports to children who are at risk of poor progress, both at home and in centres.
Intergenerational Collaborative Drawing: A Research Method for Researching with/about Young Children
Authors: Knight Linda , McArdle Felicity , Cumming Tamara , Bone Jane , Li Liang , Peterken Corinna , Ridgway Avis 
Published: March 2019

THIS PAPER FOCUSES ON the methodological effectiveness of intergenerational collaborative drawing (ICD). A group of eight researchers trialled this particular approach to drawing, most of them for the first time. Each researcher drew with young children, peers and tertiary students, with drawings created over a period of six months. The eight researchers came together in a ‘community of scholars’ approach to this project because of two shared interests: (i) issues of social justice, access and equity; and (ii) arts-based education research methods. The researchers were curious how ICD might methodically support their respective research processes. As knowledge and theory about young children becomes more complex, researchers need responsive methodological tools to ask new questions and conduct rigorous, ethical research. This partial account describes how drawing together might perform methodologically. The data reported here draws from the detailed field notes, drawings and reflections of the researchers. Conclusions arise from the analysis of these reflections, with the authors suggesting ways in which ICD might benefit research with young children.
Focusing on Strengths as Children Start School: What does it mean in practice?
Authors: Hopps-Wallis Kathryn , Fenton Angela , Dockett Sue 
Published: March 2019

RECENT AUSTRALIAN REFORMS IN early childhood education have incorporated a focus on strengths-based practices. These practices have been supported in a range of professional resources and professional development. Despite this, there has been limited interrogation of the ways in which strengths-based practice is interpreted and employed by educators. This paper reports an investigation of prior-to-school and school educators' references to strengths-based practices in their communication with each other as children made the transition to school. To assist in the analysis of this communication, we draw on a categorisation of strengths-based practices developed from analysis of cross-disciplinary research literature. Three categories of strengths-based practices—derived from the fields of positive psychology, social work and organisational practice—provide the theoretical framework for analysis of this communication data. Data reported in this paper were contributed by 22 educators as part of a broader investigation of preschool–school communication around children's transition to school. Secondary analysis of a subset of data, including questionnaire responses, interviews and documents that referred to strengths-based practices, were analysed. Results indicate that educators interpreted strengths-based practice as the sharing of positive information about children. We argue that this positive psychology approach presents a limited view of strengths-based practice and suggest that the organisational practice category offers the potential to communicate about children's strengths, as well as the challenges they may face, as they start school.
Early Childhood Teachers' Work in a Time of Change
Authors: Grant Sandra , Danby Susan , Thorpe Karen , Theobald Maryanne 
Published: March 2019

THIS ARTICLE INVESTIGATES TEACHER decision making in a time of rapid educational reforms. Institutional ethnography is used to discover how teachers' work is coordinated by the texts of a new national curriculum, and a system for the assessment and ratings of kindergarten, preschool and long day care services in individual settings and across sites. The research draws on video-recorded interview data gathered from five teachers working with three- to five-year-old children in kindergarten classrooms throughout South-East Queensland. Analysis shows the reported effects of policy regimes, designed to improve the quality of learning young children experience, on classroom teachers' work. Findings suggest that increasing levels of governance enacted through policy texts are creating an audit culture where teachers' educational work with children is changing. This article argues that the reported workload associated with the production of evidence, and the focus on providing ‘proof’ of quality, is taking teachers away from time spent building educative relationships with children.
‘You Want to Get it Right’: A Regional Queensland School's Experience in Strengthening Parent–school Partnerships
Authors: Campbell Claire , Dalley-Trim Leanne , Cordukes Lorraine 
Published: March 2019

THIS PAPER DISCUSSES THE key findings from a qualitative case study that was conducted in response to one regional Queensland state school's identified need for a customised approach to parent engagement in the early years. Data was collected via six semi-structured focus group interviews with parents ( n = 18) of children in the Preparatory year level at the school. A priori analysis of the data revealed three key barriers to parents' engagement with the school: communication, consistency and family commitments. The intention of this study was to capture parents' perspectives and experiences in order to customise and strengthen the school's approach to parent engagement. The key findings and implications presented herein contribute to the body of knowledge on parent engagement practices in early childhood education settings. Moreover, this article emphasises the importance of the development of an individualised approach to parent engagement that is informed by parents.
Effects of an Evidence-based Intervention on the Australian English Language Development of a Vulnerable Group of young Aboriginal Children
Authors: Brookes Isabel , Tayler Collette 
Published: March 2019

LEARNING IN BOTH INFORMAL and formal settings is vital to each child's sense of wellbeing and achievement, particularly for children identified as experiencing high levels of disadvantage and having markedly increased risk of poor educational attainment, health and development. National data indicates that Aboriginal children are especially vulnerable to low levels of engagement with education systems, including preschool. Recent reforms in early childhood education and care provision draw attention to focused educational strategies to promote early learning, since high-quality early learning experiences help to ameliorate early disadvantage. This paper describes an experimental study designed to assess the effect of an evidence-based early learning intervention that targets both toddler language development and their capacity to attend to tasks with an adult (in this study, an early childhood educator and/or allied health professional). Aboriginal children aged 23 to 36 months participated in this intervention that was implemented by the educators at an Aboriginal long day care service over four months. The children were assessed pre-, post- and three-months following the intervention. The significant increase in their expressive and receptive language, and their initiation of joint attention behaviours, illustrates the potential of this intervention to change the language growth trajectories of very young children who live in similar circumstances. The study findings provide direction for program improvement across the centre, and set the scene for achieving practice change that may close gaps in development and achievement for children experiencing high levels of disadvantage early—long before school. Further research on the effectiveness of a larger-scale program improvement strategy is underway.
Vitamin C and the Role of Citrus Juices as Functional Food
Authors: Martí Nuria , Mena Pedro , Cánovas Jose Antonio , Micol Vicente , Saura Domingo 
Published: March 2019

The literature on the content and stability of vitamin C (ascorbic acid, AA) in citrus juices in relation to industrial practices is reviewed. The role of vitamin C from citrus juices in human diet is also reviewed. Citrus fruits and juices are rich in several types of bioactive compounds. Their antioxidant activity and related benefits derive not only from vitamin C but also from other phytochemicals, mainly flavonoids. During juice processing, temperature and oxygen are the main factors responsible for vitamin C losses. Nonthermal processed juices retain higher levels of vitamin C, but economic factors apparently delay the use of such methods in the citrus industry. Regarding packing material, vitamin C in fruit juice is quite stable when stored in metal or glass containers, whereas juice stored in plastic bottles has a much shorter shelf-life. The limiting step for vitamin C absorption in humans is transcellular active transport across the intestinal wall where AA may be oxidized to dehydroascorbic acid (DHAA), which is easily transported across the cell membrane and immediately reduced back to AA by two major pathways. AA bioavailability in the presence of flavonoids has yielded controversial results. Whereas flavonoids seem to inhibit intestinal absorption of AA, some studies have shown that AA in citrus extract was more available than synthetic ascorbic acid alone. DHAA is reported to possess equivalent biological activity to AA, so recent studies often consider the vitamin C activity in the diet as the sum of AA plus DHAA. However, this claimed equivalence should be carefully reexamined. Humans are one of the few species lacking the enzyme (L-gulonolactone oxidase, GLO) to convert glucose to vitamin C. It has been suggested that this is due to a mutation that provided a survival advantage to early primates, since GLO produces toxic H2O2. Furthermore, the high concentration of AA (and DHAA) in neural tissues could have been the key factor that caused primates (vertebrates with relative big brain) to lose the capacity to synthesize vitamin C. Oxidative damage has many pathological implications in human health, and AA may play a central role in maintaining the metabolic antioxidant response. The abundance of citrus juices in the Mediterranean diet may provide the main dietary source for natural vitamin C.
Ingredients for Functional Drinks in Neurodegenerative Diseases: A Review
Authors: Zafrilla Pilar , Morulas Juana M , Rubio-Perez José M. , Villar Emma Cantos 
Published: March 2019

Several studies have indicated that oxidative stress is a major risk factor for the initiation and progression of neurological disorders like Parkinson's disease (PD) and Alzheimer's (AD). Therefore, reducing oxidative stress appears to be a rational choice for the prevention and reduction in the rate of progression of these neurological disorders. The brain utilizes about 25% of respired oxygen even though it represents only 5% of the body weight. Free radicals are generated during the normal intake of oxygen, during infection, and during normal oxidative metabolism of certain substrates. Although experimental data are consistent in demonstrating the neuroprotective effects of antioxidants in vitro and in animal models, the clinical evidence that antioxidant agents may prevent or slow the course of these diseases is still relatively unsatisfactory, and insufficient to strongly modify clinical practice. In this paper, natural possible substances that could be added to a beverage to prevent or decrease the developing of neurodegenerative diseases are reviewed.