Childcare centers are increasingly recognized as education agents, and school-based parent activities are part of home-school partnerships. Based on a survey of 265 parents, this study examined: (1) What made school-based parent activities useful? (2) What factors facilitated or inhibited parents’ participation? (3) What topics interested parents the most? Results showed that both structured activities (e.g., training workshops) and unstructured activities (e.g., parent-child tours) could meet parents’ needs. Parents were more likely to participate in activities that they perceived useful and allowed them to cope with the restrictions imposed by their work and family demands. Parents were most interested in activities that taught them how to deal with their children’s emotions. Finally, parents’ interests and participation varied by demographics. Copyright © 2022 AERA.

Organized extracurricular activities (EAs) are an important component of the microsystem that impacts children's lives. Previous literature has primarily focused on school-aged children and youth in Western societies. This study utilized a longitudinal design and examined the antecedents and consequences of extracurricular participation in a sample of 194 Hong Kong Chinese preschoolers. The results showed that higher family socioeconomic status (SES) predicted higher levels of participation in EAs (e.g., attendance intensity and the breadth of participation). Children from higher-SES families were more likely to involve in non-academic-oriented EAs. Participation in EAs was generally associated with the growth trajectories of reading and math skills in children from less advantaged SES backgrounds, but not higher-SES children. In contrast, EA participation was not associated with children's social skills. Findings highlight the importance of examining the relationship between EA participation and children's early development in non-Western societies. Copyright ©Elsevier Ltd.

This study examined the dynamic association between teacher–child relationship quality and Chinese toddlers' developmental functioning. The participants, located in Hong Kong, consisted of 82 Chinese toddlers and their teachers. With a two-wave longitudinal design, teachers rated the children's developmental functioning and their own relationships with each child. The results showed that the relations between teacher-child relationships and developmental functioning differed across aspects of child development. Specifically, teacher–child relationship quality predicted and was predicted by toddlers' comprehension and personal-social skills; teacher-child relationship quality predicted but was not predicted by motor and self-help skills; finally, expressive language skills predicted but were not predicted by teacher-child relationship quality. Follow-up analyses suggested that the observed relations operated similarly for boys and girls, but differently between younger and older age groups. We conclude by discussing the study's limitations and offering suggestions for promoting developmentally appropriate childcare experience for toddlers. Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Young Chinese children acquire a substantial amount of Chinese characters during their early years. Because Character recognition is foundational to higher level Chinese reading (e.g., text comprehension, it is crucial to identify factors associated with early acquisition of Chinese characters. Chinese is a morpho-syllabic language in which each character corresponds to one morpheme and one syllable. Morphemes can be combined further in specific ways to make up words. In the kindergarten period from ages 3 to 6, Chinese children progress gradually from learning some single-character words to the vast majority of double-character words. In Hong Kong, traditional kindergartens typically start to teach children to read Chinese characters in the second semester of their first kindergarten year, when they are approximately 3.5 years old. Most Hong Kong children learn Chinese in the form of traditional script with Cantonese, which is their native language, as the medium of instruction through a teaching approach of “look and say.” Language impairment often places children at risk for reading difficulties, suggesting that meta-linguistic skills may contribute to the development of Chinese character recognition. Chinese characters contain rich visual-spatial features and relations (e.g., more than 2,000 different graphic patterns to be learned by novice readers). Consequently, some researchers have suggested that visual-spatial skills may support children’s learning of Chinese characters, especially in beginning readers. The present study aims to examine the contributions of meta-linguistic and visualspatial skills to Chinese character recognition in young Chinese children. A longitudinal sample of 106 Hong Kong Chinese children were tested a total of five times from their first to third kindergarten years. Chinese character recognition, meta-linguistic skills (phonological awareness and visual-orthographic awareness), rapid automatized naming (RAN), and visual-spatial

Current literature suggests mixed findings regarding the relationship between visual spatial skill and Chinese reading ability. In this longitudinal study, 106 kindergarteners in Hong Kong were tested on visual spatial skill and Chinese character reading ability in their first, second, and third years of kindergarten (K1, K2, and K3) with 12-month intervals between the three testing points. Cross-lagged path analysis showed a bidirectional relationship between visual spatial skill and Chinese character reading ability from K1 to K2. Children's visual spatial skill in K1 predicted their reading ability in K2 (B = 0.35, SE = 0.17, p < .05, β = .17), and their reading ability in K1 explained the unique variance of visual spatial skill measured in K2 (B = 0.29, SE = 0.12, p < .05, β = .25). In total, it explained 19.4% (p < .01) and 35.8% (p < .001) variance of visual spatial skill at T2 and reading ability at T2. However, the bidirectional relationship diminished between K2 and K3. The results demonstrate the developmental course of the relationship between visual spatial skill and reading ability as well as the reciprocal facilitation of the two skills in the beginning phase of reading development but not later phases.
[Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc.]

The contribution of social context to school bullying was examined from the self-determination theory perspective in this longitudinal study of 536 adolescents from 3 secondary schools in Hong Kong. Latent class growth analysis of the student-reported data at 5 time points from grade 7 to grade 9 identified 4 groups of students: bullies (9.8%), victims (3.0%), bully-victims (9.4%), and typical students (77.8%). There was a significant association between academic tracking and group membership. Students from the school with the lowest academic performance had a greater chance of being victims and bully-victims. Longitudinal data showed that all 4 groups tended to report less victimization over the years. The victims and the typical students also had a tendency to report less bullying over the years, but this tendency was reversed for bullies and bully-victims. Perceived support from teachers for relatedness significantly predicted membership of the groups of bullies and victims. Students with higher perceived support for relatedness from their teachers had a significantly lower likelihood of being bullies or victims. The findings have implications for the theory and practice of preventive interventions in school bullying.
[Copyright © 2014 American Psychological Association.]