What is a current concern in the United States about many of todays children quizlet?

-Has the willpower, desires, and integrity to stand up to pressure, overcome distractions and disappointments, and behave morally.
A person of good moral character displays moral virtues such as "honesty, truthfulness, and trustworthiness, as well as those of care, compassion, thoughtfulness, and considerateness. Other salient traits revolve around virtues of dependability, loyalty, and conscientiousness"

-In middle and late childhood, especially from 8 to 11 years of age, children increasingly describe themselves in terms of psychological characteristics and traits, in contrast to the more concrete self-descriptions of younger children. Older children are more likely to describe themselves as "popular, nice, helpful, mean, smart, and dumb".
-In addition, during the elementary school years, children become more likely to recognize social aspects of the self. These include references to social groups in their self-descriptions, such as referring to themselves as a Girl Scout, as a Catholic, or as someone who has two close friends.
-Children's self-understanding in the elementary school years also includes increasing reference to social comparison. At this point in development, children are more likely to distinguish themselves from others in comparative rather than in absolute terms. That is, elementary-school-aged children are no longer as likely to think about what they do or do not do, but are more likely to think about what they can do in comparison with others.

-High self-esteem and a positive self-concept are important characteristics of children's well-being. Investigators sometimes use the terms self-esteem and self-concept interchangeably or do not precisely define them, but there is a meaningful difference between them.
-Self-esteem refers to global evaluations of the self; it is also called self-worth or self-image. For example, a child may perceive that she is not merely a person but a good person.
-Self-concept refers to domain-specific evaluations of the self. Children can make self-evaluations in many domains of their lives—academic, athletic, appearance, and so on. In sum, self-esteem refers to global self-evaluations, self-concept to domain-specific evaluations.

-For most children, high self-esteem and a positive self-concept are important aspects of their well-being. However, for some children, self-esteem reflects perceptions that do not always match reality. A child's self-esteem might reflect a belief about whether he or she is intelligent and attractive, for example, but that belief is not necessarily accurate. Thus, high self-esteem may refer to accurate, justified perceptions of one's worth as a person and one's successes and accomplishments, but it can also refer to an arrogant, grandiose, unwarranted sense of superiority over others. In the same manner, low self-esteem may reflect either an accurate perception of one's shortcomings or a distorted, even pathological insecurity and inferiority.

-Low self-esteem has been implicated in overweight and obesity, anxiety, depression, suicide, and delinquency. One study revealed that youth with low self-esteem had lower life satisfaction at 30 years of age. Another study found that low and decreasing self-esteem in adolescence were linked to adult depression two decades later.

-The foundations of self-esteem and self-concept emerge from the quality of parent-child interaction in infancy and childhood. Children with high self-esteem are more likely to be securely attached to their parents and to have parents who engage in sensitive caregiving. And in a longitudinal study, the quality of children's home environment (which involved assessment of parenting quality, cognitive stimulation, and the physical home environment) was linked to their self-esteem in early adulthood

-Although variations in self-esteem have been linked with many aspects of children's development, much of the research is correlational rather than experimental. Recall that correlation does not equal causation. Thus, if a correlational study finds an association between children's low self-esteem and low academic achievement, low academic achievement could cause the low self-esteem as much as low self-esteem causes low academic achievement. A recent longitudinal study examined whether self-esteem is a cause or consequence of social support in youth. In this study, self-esteem predicted subsequent changes in social support but social support did not predict subsequent changes in self-esteem.

-In fact, there are only moderate correlations between school performance and self-esteem, and these correlations do not suggest that high self-esteem produces better school performance. Efforts to increase students' self-esteem have not always led to improved school performance.

-Identify the causes of low self-esteem. Intervention should target the causes of low self-esteem. Children have the highest self-esteem when they perform competently in domains that are important to them. Therefore, children should be encouraged to identify and value areas of competence. These areas might include academic skills, athletic skills, physical attractiveness, and social acceptance.

-Provide emotional support and social approval. Some children with low self-esteem come from conflicted families or conditions in which they experienced abuse or neglect—situations in which support was not available. In some cases, alternative sources of support can be arranged either informally through the encouragement of a teacher, a coach, or another significant adult, or more formally through programs such as Big Brothers and Big Sisters.

-Help children achieve. Achievement also can improve children's self-esteem. For example, the straightforward teaching of real skills to children often results in increased achievement and, thus, in enhanced self-esteem. Children develop higher self-esteem because they know the important tasks that will achieve their goals, and they have performed them or similar behaviors in the past.

-Help children cope. Self-esteem is often increased when children face a problem and try to cope with it, rather than avoid it. If coping rather than avoidance prevails, children often face problems realistically, honestly, and nondefensively. This produces favorable self-evaluative thoughts, which lead to the self-generated approval that raises self-esteem.

-One of the most important aspects of the self in middle and late childhood is the increased capacity for self-regulation. This increased capacity is characterized by deliberate efforts to manage one's behavior, emotions, and thoughts that lead to increased social competence and achievement.
-For example, one study revealed that children from low-income families who had a higher level of self-regulation earned higher grades in school than their counterparts who had a lower level of self-regulation. Another study found that self-control increased from 4 to 10 years of age and that high self-control was linked to lower levels of deviant behavior.
-Also, a recent study of almost 17,000 3- to 7-year-old children revealed that self-regulation was a protective factor for children growing up in low-socioeconomic-status (low-SES) conditions.
-In this study, 7-year-old children with low self-regulation living in low-SES conditions had more emotional problems than their 3-year-old counterparts. Thus, low self-regulation was linked to a widening gap in low-SES children's emotional problems over time. And in a recent study, higher levels of self-control assessed at 4 years of age were linked to improvements in the math and reading achievement of early elementary school children living in predominantly rural and low-income contexts.

-The increased capacity for self-regulation is linked to developmental advances in the brain's prefrontal cortex, a topic that was discussed in "Cognitive Development in Middle and Late Childhood". In that discussion, increased focal activation in the prefrontal cortex was linked to improved cognitive control.

Earlier, we discussed Erik Erikson's (1968) eight stages of human development. His fourth stage, industry versus inferiority, appears during middle and late childhood. The term industry expresses a dominant theme of this period: Children become interested in how things are made and how they work. When children are encouraged in their efforts to make, build, and work—whether they are building a model airplane, constructing a tree house, fixing a bicycle, solving an addition problem, or cooking—their sense of industry increases. However, parents who see their children's efforts at making things as "mischief" or "making a mess" can cause children to develop a sense of inferiority.

-Children's social worlds beyond their families also contribute to a sense of industry. School becomes especially important in this regard. Consider children who are slightly below average in intelligence. They are too bright to be in special classes but not bright enough to be in gifted classes. Failing frequently in their academic efforts, they develop a sense of inferiority. By contrast, consider children whose sense of industry is disparaged at home. A series of sensitive and committed teachers may revitalize their sense of industry

-Improved emotional understanding. For example, children in elementary school develop an increased ability to understand such complex emotions as pride and shame. These emotions become less tied to the reactions of other people; they become more self-generated and integrated with a sense of personal responsibility. Also, during middle and late childhood as part of their understanding of emotions, children can engage in "mental time travel," in which they anticipate and recall the cognitive and emotional aspects of events.

-Increased understanding that more than one emotion can be experienced in a particular situation. A third-grader, for example, may realize that achieving something might involve both anxiety and joy.

-Increased tendency to be aware of the events leading to emotional reactions. A fourth-grader may become aware that her sadness today is influenced by her friend's moving to another town last week.

-Ability to suppress or conceal negative emotional reactions. When one of his classmates irritates him, a fifth-grader has learned to tone down his anger better than he used to.

-The use of self-initiated strategies for redirecting feelings. In the elementary school years, children become more reflective about their emotional lives and increasingly use strategies to control their emotions. They become more effective at cognitively managing their emotions, such as soothing themselves after an upset.

-A capacity for genuine empathy. For example, a fourth-grader feels sympathy for a distressed person and experiences vicariously the sadness the distressed person is feeling.

-An increasing number of social-emotional educational programs have been developed to improve many aspects of children's and adolescents' lives. Two such programs are the Second Step program created by the Committee for Children (2017) and the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL, 2017). Many social-emotional education programs only target young children, but Second Step can be implemented in pre-K through eighth grade and CASEL can used with pre-K through twelfth-grade students.

-Second Step focuses on these aspects of social-emotional learning from pre-K through the eighth grade: (1) pre-K: self-regulation and executive function skills that improve their attention and help them control their behavior; (2) K-grade 5: making friends, self-regulation of emotion, and solving problems; and (3) grades 6-8: communication skills, coping with stress, and decision making to avoid engaging in problem behaviors.

-CASEL targets five core social and emotional learning domains: (1) self-awareness (recognizing one's emotions and how they affect behavior, for example); (2) self-management (self-control, coping with stress, and impulse control, for example); (3) social awareness (perspective taking and empathy, for example); (4) relationship skills (developing positive relationships and communicating effectively with individuals from diverse backgrounds, for example); and (5) responsible decision making (engaging in ethical behavior, and understanding the consequences of one's actions, for example).

-An important aspect of children's lives is learning how to cope with stress. As children get older, they are able to more accurately appraise a stressful situation and determine how much control they have over it. Older children generate more coping alternatives to stressful conditions and use more cognitive coping strategies. For example, older children are better than younger children at intentionally shifting their thoughts to something that is less stressful. Older children are also better at reframing, or changing their perception of a stressful situation. For example, younger children may be very disappointed that their teacher did not say hello to them when they arrived at school. Older children may reframe this type of situation and think, "She may have been busy with other things and just forgot to say hello."

-By 10 years of age, most children are able to use cognitive strategies to cope with stress. However, in families that have not been supportive and are characterized by turmoil or trauma, children may be so overwhelmed by stress that they do not use such strategies

-Disasters can especially harm children's development and produce adjustment problems. Among the outcomes for children who experience disasters are acute stress reactions, depression, panic disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Proportions of children developing these problems following a disaster depend on factors such as the nature and severity of the disaster, as well as the support available to the children. Also, children who have developed a number of coping techniques have the best chance of adapting and functioning competently in the face of disasters and trauma

-In a study of mothers and their children aged 5 years and younger who were directly exposed to the 9/11 attacks in New York City, the mothers who developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression were less likely to help their children regulate their emotions and behavior than mothers who were only depressed or only had PTSD. This outcome was linked to their children having anxiety, depression, aggression, and sleep problems.

-A study of the effects of the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka found that severe exposure to the tsunami combined with more exposure to other adversities, such as an ongoing war and family violence, was linked to poorer adjustment after the tsunami disaster.

-A research review revealed that children with disabilities are more likely than children without disabilities to live in poverty conditions, which increases their exposure to hazards and disasters. When a disaster occurs, children with disabilities have more difficulty escaping from the disaster.

-In research on disasters and trauma, the term dose-response effects is often used. A widely supported finding in this research area is that the more severe the disaster or trauma (dose) is, the worse the adaptation and adjustment (response) following the event

-A second major perspective on moral development was proposed by Lawrence Kohlberg (1958, 1986). Piaget's cognitive stages of development serve as the underpinnings for Kohlberg's theory, but Kohlberg suggested that there are six stages of moral development. These stages, he argued, are universal. Development from one stage to another, said Kohlberg, is fostered by opportunities to take the perspective of others and to experience conflict between one's current stage of moral thinking and the reasoning of someone at a higher stage.
-Kohlberg arrived at his view after 20 years of using a unique interview with children. In the interview, children are presented with a series of stories in which characters face moral dilemmas. The following is the most popular Kohlberg dilemma:
-In Europe a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together $1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug, and I am going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.
-This story is one of eleven that Kohlberg devised to investigate the nature of moral thought.

-Preconventional reasoning is the lowest level of moral reasoning, said Kohlberg. At this level, good and bad are interpreted in terms of external rewards and punishments.
-Stage 1. Heteronomous morality is the first stage in preconventional reasoning. At this stage, moral thinking is tied to punishment. For example, children think that they must obey because they fear punishment for disobedience.
-Stage 2. Individualism, instrumental purpose, and exchange is the second stage of preconventional reasoning. At this stage, individuals reason that pursuing their own interests is the right thing to do, but they let others do the same. Thus, they think that what is right involves an equal exchange. They reason that if they are nice to others, others will be nice to them in return.

-Conventional reasoning is the second, or intermediate, level in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. At this level, individuals apply certain standards, but they are the standards set by others, such as parents or the government.
-Stage 3. Mutual interpersonal expectations, relationships, and interpersonal conformity is Kohlberg's third stage of moral development. At this stage, individuals value trust, caring, and loyalty to others as a basis for moral judgments. Children and adolescents often adopt their parents' moral standards at this stage, seeking to be thought of by their parents as a "good girl" or a "good boy."
-Stage 4. Social systems morality is the fourth stage in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. At this stage, moral judgments are based on understanding the social order, law, justice, and duty. For example, adolescents may reason that in order for a community to work effectively, it needs to be protected by laws that are adhered to by its members

-Postconventional reasoning is the highest level in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. At this level, the individual recognizes alternative moral courses, explores the options, and then decides on a personal moral code.
-Stage 5. Social contract or utility and individual rights is the fifth Kohlberg stage. At this stage, individuals reason that values, rights, and principles undergird or transcend the law. A person evaluates the validity of actual laws and realizes that social systems can be examined in terms of the degree to which they preserve and protect fundamental human rights and values.
-Stage 6. Universal ethical principles is the sixth and highest stage in Kohlberg's theory of moral development. At this stage, the person has developed a moral standard based on universal human rights. When faced with a conflict between law and conscience, the person reasons that conscience should be followed, even though the decision might bring risk.

-Kohlberg held that these levels and stages occur in a sequence and are age-related. Before age 9, most children use level 1, preconventional reasoning based on external rewards and punishments, when they consider moral choices. By early adolescence, their moral reasoning is increasingly based on the application of standards set by others. Most adolescents reason at stage 3, with some signs of stages 2 and 4. By early adulthood, a small number of individuals reason in postconventional ways.

-What evidence supports this description of development? A 20-year longitudinal investigation found that use of stages 1 and 2 decreased with age. Stage 4, which did not appear at all in the moral reasoning of 10-year-olds, was reflected in the moral thinking of 62 percent of the 36-year-olds. Stage 5 did not appear until age 20 to 22 and never characterized more than 10 percent of the individuals.

The most publicized criticism of Kohlberg's theory has come from Carol Gilligan
-who argues that Kohlberg's theory reflects a gender bias. According to Gilligan, Kohlberg's theory is based on a male norm that puts abstract principles above relationships and concern for others and sees the individual as standing alone and independently making moral decisions. It puts justice at the heart of morality. In contrast to Kohlberg's
-justice perspective, which focuses on the rights of the individual,
Gilligan argues for a
-care perspective, which is a moral perspective that views people in terms of their connectedness with others and emphasizes interpersonal communication, relationships with others, and concern for others.
--According to Gilligan, Kohlberg greatly underplayed the care perspective, perhaps because he was a male, because most of his research was with males rather than females, and because he used male responses as a model for his theory.

-In extensive interviews with girls from 6 to 18 years of age, Gilligan and her colleagues found that girls consistently interpret moral dilemmas in terms of human relationships and base these interpretations on watching and listening to other people. However, a meta-analysis (a statistical analysis that combines the results of many different studies) casts doubt on Gilligan's claim of substantial gender differences in moral judgment. A review concluded that girls' moral orientations are "somewhat more likely to focus on care for others than on abstract principles of justice, but they can use both moral orientations when needed (as can boys . . .)"

Beyond the development of moral reasoning and specific moral feelings and behaviors, do children also develop a pattern of moral characteristics that is distinctively their own? In other words, do children develop a moral personality, and if so, what are its components? Researchers have focused attention on three possible components: (1) moral identity, (2) moral character, and (3) moral exemplars:

1-Moral identity. Individuals have a moral identity when moral notions and moral commitments are central to their lives. They construct the self with reference to moral categories. Violating their moral commitment would place the integrity of their self at risk
2-Moral character. A person with moral character has the willpower, desires, and integrity to stand up to pressure, overcome distractions and disappointments, and behave morally. A person of good moral character displays moral virtues such as "honesty, truthfulness, and trustworthiness, as well as those of care, compassion, thoughtfulness, and considerateness. Other salient traits revolve around virtues of dependability, loyalty, and conscientiousness"
3-Moral exemplars. Moral exemplars are people who have lived exemplary moral lives. Their moral personality, identity, character, and set of virtues reflect moral excellence and commitment.

focuses on conventional rules that have been established by social consensus in order to control behavior and maintain the social system. The rules themselves are arbitrary, such as raising your hand in class before speaking, using one staircase at school to go up, the other to go down, not cutting in front of someone standing in line to buy movie tickets, and stopping at a stop sign when driving. There are sanctions if we violate these conventions, although they can be changed by consensus.

In contrast, moral reasoning focuses on ethical issues and rules of morality. Unlike conventional rules, moral rules are not arbitrary. They are obligatory, widely accepted, and somewhat impersonal (Dahl & Killen, 2017; Mulvey & others, 2016; Turiel, 2015). Rules pertaining to lying, cheating, stealing, and physically harming another person are moral rules because violation of these rules affronts ethical standards that exist apart from social consensus and convention. Moral judgments involve concepts of justice, whereas social conventional judgments are concepts of social organization. Violating moral rules is usually more serious than violating conventional rules.

Recently, a distinction also has been made between moral and conventional issues, which are viewed as legitimately subject to adult social regulation, and personal issues, which are more likely subject to the child's or adolescent's independent decision making and personal discretion (Killen & Dahl, 2017; Turiel & Gingo, 2017). Personal issues include control over one's body, privacy, and choice of friends and activities. Thus, some actions belong to a personal domain, not governed by moral strictures or social norms.

-Moral, conventional, and personal domains of reasoning arise in families. Moral issues include actions such as lying to parents about engaging in a deviant behavior or stealing money from a sibling. Conventional issues involve matters such as curfews and who takes out the garbage. Personal issues involve such things as what kinds of music to like, what styles of clothing to wear, what to put on the walls of one's bedroom, and which friends to choose. A recent study of 5- to 9-year-old American and Chinese children found that older children were more likely to say that judgments about personal issues were up to the child to decide (Smetana & others, 2014).

-In domain theory, boundaries are developed regarding adult authority, which can produce parent-adolescent conflict. Adolescents have a large personal domain and most parents can live with that; however, parents have a larger moral domain than adolescents think is reasonable

-Children engage in both immoral antisocial acts such as lying and cheating and prosocial moral behavior such as showing empathy or acting altruistically (Carlo & others, 2017; Eisenberg & Spinrad, 2016; Laible & others, 2017; Streit & others, 2017). Even during the preschool years children may care for others or comfort others in distress, but prosocial behavior occurs more often in adolescence than in childhood (Eisenberg & Spinrad, 2016).

-William Damon (1988) described how sharing develops. During their first years, when children share, it is usually not for reasons of empathy but for the fun of the social play ritual or out of imitation. Then, at about 4 years of age, a combination of empathic awareness and adult encouragement produces a sense of obligation on the part of the child to share with others.Page 393 Most 4-year-olds are not selfless saints, however. Children believe they have an obligation to share but do not necessarily think they should be as generous to others as they are to themselves.

-Children's sharing comes to reflect a more complex sense of what is just and right during middle and late childhood. By the start of the elementary school years, children begin to express objective ideas about fairness (Eisenberg, Fabes, & Spinrad, 2006). It is common to hear 6-year-old children use the word fair as synonymous with equal or same. By the mid to late elementary school years, children understand that equity sometimes means that people with special merit or special needs deserve special treatment.

-In sum, moral development is a multifaceted, complex concept. Included in this complexity are thoughts, feelings, behaviors, personality, relationships, domains, and prosocial behavior.

-According to the old ditty, boys are made of "frogs and snails" and girls are made of "sugar and spice and all that's nice." In the past, a well-adjusted boy was supposed to be independent, aggressive, and powerful. A well-adjusted girl was supposed to be dependent, nurturing, and uninterested in power. The masculine characteristics were considered to be healthy and good by society; the feminine characteristics were considered undesirable. These notions reflect gender stereotypes, which are broad categories that reflect general impressions and beliefs about females and males.

-Gender stereotyping continues to change during middle and late childhood (Brannon, 2017; Halim, 2016; Halim & others, 2016). Research indicates that while gender stereotyping is often a time of gender rigidity, in middle and late childhood boys and girls become more flexible in their gender-typing (Halim, 2016; Halim & others, 2016). In some studies, the increase in gender flexibility characterizes girls more than boys (Halim & others, 2016). For example, a study of 3- to 10-year-old U.S. children revealed that girls and older children used a higher percentage of gender stereotypes (Miller & others, 2009). In this study, appearance stereotypes were more prevalent on the part of girls, whereas activity (sports, for example) and trait (aggressive, for example) stereotyping was more commonly engaged in by boys.

-Women have about twice the body fat of men, most of it concentrated around breasts and hips. In males, fat is more likely to go to the abdomen. On average, males grow to be 10 percent taller than females. Other physical differences are less obvious. From conception on, females have a longer life expectancy than males, and females are less likely than males to develop physical or mental disorders. The risk of coronary disease is twice as high in males as in females.
-Does gender matter when it comes to brain structure and function? Human brains are much alike, whether the brain belongs to a male or a female (Halpern, 2006, 2012; Halpern & others, 2007). However, researchers have found some differences in the brains of males and females (Hofer & others, 2007). Among the differences that have been discovered are the following:

-Female brains are approximately 10 percent smaller than male brains (Giedd, 2012; Giedd & others, 2012). However, female brains have more folds; the larger folds (called convolutions) allow more surface brain tissue within the skulls of females than males (Luders & others, 2004).
-One part of the hypothalamus responsible for sexual behavior is larger in men than women (Swaab & others, 2001).
-An area of the parietal lobe that functions in visuospatial skills is larger in males than females (Frederikse & others, 2000).
-The areas of the brain involved in emotional expression show more metabolic activity in females than males (Gur & others, 1995)

Although some differences in brain structure and function have been found, either many of these differences are small or research is inconsistent regarding the differences. Also, when sex differences in the brain have been revealed, in many cases they have not been directly linked to psychological differences (Blakemore, Berenbaum, & Liben, 2009). Although research on sex differences in the brain is still in its infancy, it is likely that there are far more similarities than differences in the brains of females and males.

No gender differences in general intelligence have been revealed, but gender differences have been found in some cognitive areas (Halpern, 2012). A very large-scale study of more than 7 million U.S. students in grades 2 through 11 revealed no differences in math scores for boys and girls (Hyde & others, 2008). And a recent meta-analysis found no gender differences in math scores for adolescents (Lindberg & others, 2010). A recent research review concluded that girls have more negative math attitudes and that parents' and teachers' expectations for children's math competence are often gender-biased in favor of boys (Gunderson & others, 2012). And in one study, 6- to 12-year-olds reported that math is mainly for boys (Cvencek, Meltzoff, & Greenwald, 2011). The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (2016) found that in 2015 girls scored significantly higher than boys in reading, while there were virtually no gender differences in math scores at the fourth-grade level. In 2011, girls had scored significantly higher than boys did in writing (National Assessment of Educational Progress (2012). Also, in a recent international assessment involving 65 countries, in every country girls had higher reading achievement than did boys (Reilly, 2012). Cultural variations occurred in this study, with the gender difference in reading occurring more in countries with less gender equity and lower economic prosperity.

One area of math that has been examined for possible gender differences is visuospatial skills, which include being able to rotate objects mentally and determine what they would look like when rotated. These types of skills are important in courses such as plane and solid geometry and geography. A research review revealed that boys have better visuospatial skills than girls (Halpern & others, 2007). For example, despite equal participation in the National Geography Bee, in most years all 10 finalists were boys (Liben, 1995). A recent research review found that having a stronger masculine gender role was linked to better spatial ability in males and females (Reilly & Neuman, 2013). Some experts argue that the gender difference in visuospatial skills is small

-Five areas of socioemotional development in which gender similarities and differences have been studied extensively are aggression, relationships, emotion, prosocial behavior, and gender in school contexts.
-One of the most consistent gender differences is that boys are more physically aggressive than girls are (Hyde, 2014). The difference occurs in all cultures and appears very early in children's development (Dayton & Malone, 2017). The physical aggression difference is especially pronounced when children are provoked. Both biological and environmental factors have been proposed to account for gender differences in aggression. Biological factors include heredity and hormones. Environmental factors include cultural expectations, adult and peer models, and social agents that reward aggression in boys and punish aggression in girls.
-Although boys are consistently more physically aggressive than girls, might girls show at least as much verbal aggression, such as yelling, as boys do? When verbal aggression is examined, gender differences often disappear; sometimes, though, verbal aggression is more pronounced in girls

-Recently, increased interest has been directed toward relational aggression, which involves harming someone by manipulating a relationship. Relational aggression includes behaviors such as trying to make others dislike a certain individual by spreading malicious rumors about the person. Mixed findings have characterized research on whether girls show more relational aggression than boys, but one consistency in findings is that relational aggression comprises a greater percentage of girls' overall aggression than is the case for boys . And a recent research review revealed that girls engage in more relational aggression than boys in adolescence but not in childhood
-Gender differences occur in some aspects of emotion (Leaper, 2013). Females express emotion more than do males, are better than males at decoding emotion, smile more, cry more, and are happier (Gross, Frederickson, & Levenson, 1994; LaFrance, Hecht, & Paluck, 2003). Males report experiencing and expressing more anger than do females (Kring, 2000). And a recent meta-analysis found that females are better than males at recognizing nonverbal displays of emotion (Thompson & Voyer, 2014). However, another recent meta-analysis found that overall gender differences in children's emotional expression were small, with girls showing more positive emotions (sympathy, for example) and more internalized emotions (sadness and anxiety, for example) (Chaplin & Aldao, 2013). In this analysis, the gender difference in positive emotions became more pronounced with age as girls more strongly expressed positive emotions than boys in middle and late childhood and in adolescence.

-Across childhood and adolescence, females engage in more prosocial behavior (Eisenberg & Spinrad, 2016). The biggest gender difference occurs for kind and considerate behavior, with a smaller difference in sharing.
-Are there gender differences in school contexts? With regard to school achievement, girls earn better grades and complete high school at a higher rate than boys (Halpern, 2012). Males are more likely than females to be assigned to special/remedial education classes. Girls are more likely than boys to be engaged with academic material, be attentive in class, put forth more academic effort, and participate more in class (DeZolt & Hull, 2001).
-Keep in mind that measures of achievement in school or scores on standardized tests may reflect many factors besides cognitive ability. For example, performance in school may in part reflect attempts to conform to gender roles or differences in motivation, self-regulation, or other socioemotional characteristics

-The argument for single-sex education is that it eliminates distraction from the other sex and reduces sexual harassment. Single-sex public education has increased dramatically in recent years. In 2002, only 12 public schools in the U.S. provided single-sex education; in the 2011-2012 school year, 116 public schools were single-sex and an additional 390 provided such experiences

-The increase in single-sex education has especially been fueled by its inclusion in the No Child Left Behind legislation as a means of improving the educational experiences and academic achievement of low-income students of color. It appears that many of the public schools offering single-sex education have a high percentage of such youth (Klein, 2012). However, two recent research reviews concluded that there have been no documented benefits of single-sex education for low-income students of color (Goodkind, 2013; Halpern & others, 2011). One review, titled "The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling," by Diane Halpern and her colleagues (2011) concluded that single-sex education is highly misguided, misconstrued, and unsupported by any valid scientific evidence. They emphasize that among the many arguments against single-sex education, the strongest is its reduction in opportunities for boys and girls to work together in a supervised, purposeful environment.

-There has been a special call for single-sex public education for one group of adolescents—African American boys—because of their historically poor academic achievement and high dropout rate from school (Mitchell & Stewart, 2013). In 2010, Urban Prep Academy for Young Men became the first all-male, all African American public charter school. One hundred percent of its first graduates enrolled in college, despite the school's location in a section of Chicago where poverty, gangs, and crime predominate. Because so few public schools focus solely on educating African American boys, it is too early to tell whether this type of single-sex education can be effective across a wide range of participants.

-The nature and extent of gender differences may depend on the context. The importance of considering gender in context is nowhere more apparent than when we examine what is culturally prescribed behavior for females and males in different countries around the world. Although there has been greater acceptance of androgyny and similarities in male and female behavior in the United States, in many countries gender roles have remained gender-specific (UNICEF, 2017). For example, in many Middle Eastern countries, the division of labor between males and females is dramatic. Males are socialized and schooled to work in the public sphere, females in the private world of home and child rearing. For example, in many Middle Eastern countries, the dominant view is that the man's duty is to provide for his family and the woman's is to care for her family and household. China and India also have been male-dominant cultures. Although women have made some strides in China and India, especially in urban areas, the male role is still dominant. Most males in China and India do not accept androgynous behavior or gender equity.

-In a recent study of eighth-grade students in 36 countries, in every country girls had more egalitarian attitudes about gender roles than boys did (Dotti Sani & Quaranta, 2017). In this study, girls had more egalitarian gender attitudes in countries with higher levels of societal gender equality. In another recent study of 15- to 19-year-olds in the country of Qatar, males had more negative views of gender equality than females did

-As children move into the middle and late childhood years, parents spend considerably less time with them (Grusec, 2017; Grusec & others, 2013). In one study, parents spent less than half as much time with their children aged 5 to 12 in caregiving, instruction, reading, talking, and playing as when the children were younger (Hill & Stafford, 1980). Although parents spend less time with their children in middle and late childhood than in early childhood, parents continue to be extremely important in their children's lives. In an analysis of the contributions of parents in middle and late childhood, the following conclusion was reached: "Parents serve as gatekeepers and provide scaffolding as children assume more responsibility for themselves and . . . regulate their own lives"

-Parents especially play an important role in supporting and stimulating children's academic achievement in middle and late childhood (Rowe, Ramani, & Pomerantz, 2016). The value parents place on education can determine whether children do well in school. Parents not only influence children's in-school achievement, but they also make decisions about children's out-of-school activities. Whether children participate in sports, music, and other activities is heavily influenced by the extent to which parents sign up children for such activities or encourage their participation (Simpkins & others, 2006).
-Elementary school children tend to receive less physical discipline than they did as preschoolers. Instead of spanking or coercive holding, their parents are more likely to use deprivation of privileges, appeals to the child's self-esteem, comments designed to increase the child's sense of guilt, and statements that the child is responsible for his or her actions.
-During middle and late childhood, some control is transferred from parent to child. The process is gradual, and it produces coregulation rather than control by either the child or the parent alone. Parents continue to exercise general supervision and control, while children are allowed to engage in moment-to-moment self-regulation. The major shift to autonomy does not occur until about the age of 12 or later. A key developmental task as children move toward autonomy is learning to relate to adults outside the family on a regular basis—adults such as teachers, who interact with the child much differently from parents.

-Parents can play important roles as managers of children's opportunities, as monitors of their behavior, and as social initiators and arrangers (Clarke-Stewart & Parke, 2014). Mothers are more likely than fathers to take a managerial role in parenting.
-Researchers have found that family management practices are positively related to students' grades and self-responsibility, and negatively to school-related problems. Among the most important family management practices in this regard are maintaining a structured and organized family environment, such as establishing routines for homework, chores, meals, bedtime, and so on, and effectively monitoring the child's behavior. A research review of family functioning in African American students' academic achievement found that when African American parents monitored their sons' academic achievement by ensuring that homework was completed, restricted time spent on nonproductive distractions (such as video games and TV), and participated in a consistent, positive dialogue with teachers and school officials, their sons' academic achievement benefited

-Not only has divorce become commonplace in the United States, so has getting remarried. It takes time for parents to marry, have children, get divorced, and then remarry. Consequently, there are far more elementary and secondary school children than infant or preschool children living in stepfamilies.

-The number of remarriages involving children has grown steadily in recent years. Also, divorces occur at a 10 percent higher rate in remarriages than in first marriages. About half of all children whose parents divorce will have a stepparent within four years of the separation.

-Remarried parents face some unique tasks. The couple must define and strengthen their marriage and at the same time renegotiate the biological parent-child relationships and establish stepparent-stepchild and stepsibling relationships. The complex histories and multiple relationships make adjustment in a stepfamily difficult. Only one-third of stepfamily couples stay remarried.

-Three common types of stepfamily structure are (1) stepfather, (2) stepmother, and (3) blended or complex. In stepfather families, the mother typically had custody of the children and remarried, introducing a stepfather into her children's lives. In stepmother families, the father usually had custody and remarried, introducing a stepmother into his children's lives. In a blended or complex stepfamily, both parents bring children from previous marriages to live in the newly formed stepfamily.

-In E. Mavis Hetherington's (2006) longitudinal analyses, children and adolescents who had been in a simple stepfamily (stepfather or stepmother) for a number of years were adjusting better than they did in the early years of the remarried family and were functioning well in comparison with children and adolescents in conflicted nondivorced families and children and adolescents in complex (blended) stepfamilies. More than 75 percent of the adolescents in long-established simple stepfamilies described their relationships with their stepparents as "close" or "very close." Hetherington (2006) concluded that in long-established simple stepfamilies adolescents seem to eventually benefit from the presence of a stepparent and the resources provided by the stepparent.

-Also, children in simple families (stepmother, stepfather) often show better adjustment than their counterparts in complex (blended) families

-As in divorced families, children in stepfamilies show more adjustment problems than children in nondivorced families (Hetherington & Kelly, 2002). The adjustment problems are similar to those found among children of divorced parents—academic problems and lower self-esteem, for example (Anderson & others, 1999). However, it is important to recognize that a majority of children in stepfamilies do not have problems. In one analysis, 25 percent of children from stepfamilies showed adjustment problems compared with 10 percent in intact, never-divorced families.

-Adolescence is an especially difficult time for the formation of a stepfamily (Anderson & others, 1999; Gosselin, 2010). Problems may occur because becoming part of a stepfamily exacerbates normal adolescent concerns about identity, sexuality, and autonomy.

-Engaging in positive interactions with peers, resolving conflicts with peers in nonaggressive ways, and having quality friendships in middle and late childhood not only create positive outcomes at this time in children's lives, but also are linked to more positive relationship outcomes in adolescence and adulthood (Huston & Ripke, 2006). For example, in one longitudinal study, being popular with peers and engaging in low levels of aggression at 8 years of age were related to higher levels of occupational status at 48 years of age (Huesmann & others, 2006). Another study found that peer competence (a composite measure that included social contact with peers, popularity with peers, friendship, and social skills) in middle and late childhood was linked to having better relationships with co-workers in early adulthood (Collins & van Dulmen, 2006). And a recent study indicated that low peer status in childhood (low acceptance/likeability) was linked to increased probability of being unemployed and having mental health problems in adulthood

-As children enter the elementary school years, reciprocity becomes especially important in peer interchanges. Researchers estimate that the percentage of time spent in social interaction with peers increases from approximately 10 percent at 2 years of age to more than 30 percent in middle and late childhood (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). In one early study, a typical day in elementary school included approximately 300 episodes with peers (Barker & Wright, 1951). As children move through middle and late childhood, the size of their peer group increases, and peer interaction is less closely supervised by adults (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). Until about 12 years of age, children's preference for same-sex peer groups increases.

-provided three reasons why aggressive peer-rejected boys have problems in social relationships:

"First, the rejected, aggressive boys are more impulsive and have problems sustaining attention. As a result, they are more likely to be disruptive of ongoing activities in the classroom and in focused group play.

Second, rejected, aggressive boys are more emotionally reactive. They are aroused to anger more easily and probably have more difficulty calming down once aroused. Because of this they are more prone to become angry at peers and attack them verbally and physically. . . .

Third, rejected children have fewer social skills in making friends and maintaining positive relationships with peers."

-Not all rejected children are aggressive. Although aggression and its related characteristics of impulsiveness and disruptiveness underlie rejection about half the time, approximately 10 to 20 percent of rejected children are shy.
-How can rejected children be trained to interact more effectively with their peers? Rejected children may be taught to more accurately assess whether the intentions of their peers are negative (Fontaine & others, 2010). They may be asked to engage in role playing or to discuss hypothetical situations involving negative encounters with peers, such as when a peer cuts into a line ahead of them. In some programs, children are shown videotapes of appropriate peer interaction and asked to draw lessons from what they have seen

-A boy accidentally trips and knocks another boy's soft drink out of his hand. The second boy misconstrues the encounter as hostile, and his interpretation leads him to retaliate aggressively against the boy who tripped. Through repeated encounters of this kind, the aggressive boy's classmates come to perceive him as habitually acting in inappropriate ways.

-This example demonstrates the importance of social cognition—thoughts about social matters, such as the aggressive boy's interpretation of an encounter as hostile and his classmates' perception of his behavior as inappropriate (Carpendale & Lewis, 2015; Vetter & others, 2013). Children's social cognition about their peers becomes increasingly important for understanding peer relationships in middle and late childhood. Of special interest are the ways in which children process information about peer relations and their social knowledge (Dodge 2011a, b; White & Kistner, 2011).

-Kenneth Dodge (1983, 2011a, b) argues that children go through five steps in processing information about their social world. They decode social cues, interpret, search for a response, select an optimal response, and enact. Dodge has found that aggressive boys are more likely to perceive another child's actions as hostile when the child's intention is ambiguous. And, when aggressive boys search for cues to determine a peer's intention, they respond more rapidly, less efficiently, and less reflectively than do nonaggressive children. These are among the social cognitive factors believed to be involved in children's conflicts.

-Social knowledge also is involved in children's ability to get along with peers (Carpendale & Lewis, 2015). They need to know what goals to pursue in poorly defined or ambiguous situations, how to initiate and maintain a social bond, and what scripts to follow to get other children to be their friends. For example, as part of the script for getting friends, it helps to know that saying nice things, regardless of what the peer does or says, will make the peer like the child more.

-Significant numbers of students are victimized by bullies (Campaert, Nocentini, & Menesini, 2017; Connell, Morris, & Piquero, 2016; Hall, 2017; Ladd. Ettekal, & Kochendorfer-Ladd, 2017; Muijs, 2017; Naidoo & others, 2016; Wang & others, 2017; Zarate-Garza & others, 2017). In a national survey of more than 15,000 students in grades 6 through 10, nearly one of every three students said that they had experienced occasional or frequent involvement as a victim or perpetrator in bullying (Nansel & others, 2001). In this study, bullying was defined as verbal or physical behavior intended to disturb someone less powerful
Boys are more likely to be bullies than girls, but gender differences regarding victims of bullying are less clear

-In the study just described, boys and younger middle school students were most likely to be affected (Nansel & others, 2001). Children who said they were bullied reported more loneliness and difficulty in making friends, while those who did the bullying were more likely to have low grades and to smoke and drink alcohol.

-Researchers have found that anxious, socially withdrawn, and aggressive children are often the victims of bullying. Anxious and socially withdrawn children may be victimized because they are nonthreatening and unlikely to retaliate if bullied, whereas aggressive children may be the targets of bullying because their behavior is irritating to bullies. Overweight and obese children are often bullied. A recent study revealed that having supportive friends was linked to a lower level of bullying and victimization

-Social contexts such as poverty, family, and peer contexts also influence bullying. A recent study revealed that ethnic minority children living in poverty who had behavioral problems were more likely to become bullies, as were children whose mothers had suboptimal mental health. Also in this study, children whose parents talked with them more, had met all or most of their friends, and who always or usually completed their homework were less likely to become bullies. A recent meta-analysis indicated that positive parenting behavior (including having good communication, a warm relationship, being involved, and engaging in supervision of their children) was related to a lesser likelihood that a child would become either a bully/victim or a victim at school

(an abnormal fear of being in public, open, and crowded places), depression, anxiety, panic disorder, and suicidality in their early to mid-twenties compared to those who have not been bullied in childhood and adolescence (Arseneault, 2017; Copeland & others, 2013). In addition, another recent study revealed that being a victim of bullying in childhood was linked to increased use of mental health services by the victims five decades later (Evans-Lacko & others, 2017). An increasing concern is peer bullying and harassment on the Internet (called cyberbullying) (Vollink, Dehue, & McGuckin, 2016; Wolke, Lee, & Guy, 2017). One study involving third- to sixth-graders revealed that engaging in cyber aggression was related to loneliness, lower self-esteem, fewer mutual friendships, and lower peer popularity (Schoffstall & Cohen, 2011). Another recent study revealed that cyberbullying contributed to depression and suicidal ideation above and beyond the contribution of involvement in traditional types of bullying (physical and verbal bullying in school and in neighborhood contexts, for example) (Bonanno & Hymel, 2013). And a recent meta-analysis concluded that being the victim of cyberbullying was linked to stress and suicidal ideation (Kowalski & others, 2014). Further, a longitudinal study found that adolescents experiencing social and emotional difficulties were more likely to be both cyberbullied and traditionally bullied than traditionally bullied only (Cross, Lester, & Barnes, 2015). In this study, adolescents targeted in both ways stayed away from school more than their counterparts who were traditionally bullied only. And a recent study revealed that adolescents who were bullied both in a direct way and through cyberbullying had more behavioral problems and lower self-esteem than adolescents who were only bullied in one of these two ways

Bullies are highly aggressive toward other children but are not victims of bullying.
Bully-victims are not only highly aggressive toward other children but also are the recipients of other children's bullying.
Victims are passive, non-aggressive respondents to bullying.
Prosocial children engage in positive behaviors such as sharing, helping, comforting, and empathizing.

-Teacher and peer ratings in 34 classrooms were used to classify 212 7- to 8-year-old boys and girls into the aforementioned four categories. On a 5-point scale (from never to several times a week), teachers rated (1) how often the child bullied others and (2) how often the child was bullied. The ratings focused on three types of bullying and being victimized: physical aggression, verbal aggression, and excluding others. On a 4-point scale (from not applicable to very clearly applicable), teachers also rated children's prosocial behavior on three items: "willingly shares with others," "comforts others if necessary," and "empathizes with others." Peer ratings assessed children's nominations of which children in the classroom acted as bullies, were victimized by bullies, and engaged in prosocial behavior. Combining the teacher and peer ratings after eliminating those that did not agree on which children were bullies, victims, or prosocial children, the final sample consisted of 49 bullies, 80 bully-victims, 33 victims, and 50 prosocial children.

-Children's perspective-taking skills were assessed using theory of mind tasks, and moral motivation was examined by interviewing children about aspects of right and wrong in stories about children's transgressions. In one theory of mind task, children were tested to see whether they understood that people may have false beliefs about another individual. In another theory of mind task, children were assessed to determine whether they understood that people sometimes hide their emotions by showing an emotion different from what they really feel. A moral interview also was conducted in which children were told four moral transgression stories (with content about being unwilling to share with a classmate, stealing candy from a classmate, hiding a victim's shoes, and verbally bullying a victim) and then asked to judge whether the acts were right or wrong and how the participants in the stories likely felt.

-The results of the study indicated that only bully-victims—but not bullies—were deficient in perspective taking. Further analysis revealed that both aggressive groups of children—bullies and bully-victims—had a deficiency in moral motivation. The analyses were consistent with a portrait of bullies as socially competent and knowledgeable in terms of perspective-taking skills and being able to effectively interact with peers. However, bullies use this social knowledge for their own manipulative purposes. The analysis also confirmed the picture of the bully as being morally insensitive. Another recent study also found that bullying was linked to moral disengagement

-A research review revealed mixed results for school-based intervention (Vreeman & Carroll, 2007). School-based interventions vary greatly, ranging from involving the whole school in an antibullying campaign to providing individualized social skills training (Strohmeier & Noam, 2012). A recent teacher intervention in elementary and secondary schools to decrease bullying that focused on increasing bullies' empathy and condemning their behavior was effective in increasing the bullies' intent to stop being a bully. In this study, blaming the bully had no effect.

-One of the most promising bullying intervention programs has been created by Dan Olweus (2003, 2013). This program focuses on 6- to 15-year-olds, with the goal of decreasing opportunities and rewards for bullying. School staff are instructed in ways to improve peer relations and make schools safer. When properly implemented, the program reduces bullying by 30 to 70 percent. Also, a recent research review concluded that interventions focused on the whole school, such as Olweus', are more effective than interventions involving classroom curricula or social skills training

-Companionship. Friendship provides children with a familiar partner and playmate, someone who is willing to spend time with them and join in collaborative activities.
-Stimulation. Friendship provides children with interesting information, excitement, and amusement.
-Physical support. Friendship provides resources and assistance.
-Ego support. Friendship provides the expectation of support, encouragement, and feedback, which helps children maintain an impression of themselves as competent, attractive, and worthwhile individuals.
-Social comparison. Friendship provides information about where the child stands vis-à-vis others and whether the child is doing okay.
-Affection and intimacy. Friendship provides children with a warm, close, trusting relationship with another individual.

Intimacy in friendships is characterized by self-disclosure and the sharing of private thoughts. Research reveals that intimate friendships may not appear until early adolescence

-People differ in the company they keep—that is, who their friends are. Developmental advantages occur when children have friends who are socially skilled and supportive (Chow, Tan, & Buhrmester, 2015; Kindermann, 2016). However, it is not developmentally advantageous to have coercive and conflict-ridden friendships (Schneider, 2016).

-The importance of friendship was underscored in a two-year longitudinal study (Wentzel, Barry, & Caldwell, 2004). Sixth-grade students who did not have a friend engaged in less prosocial behavior (cooperation, sharing, helping others), had lower grades, and were more emotionally distressed (displaying depression, low well-being) than their counterparts who had one or more friends. Two years later, in the eighth grade, the students who did not have a friend in the sixth grade continued to be more emotionally distressed.

One criticism stresses that using a single test as the sole indicator of students' progress and competence presents a very narrow view of students' skills (Lewis, 2007).
-This criticism is similar to the one leveled at IQ tests, which we described in "Cognitive Development in Middle and Late Childhood." To assess student progress and achievement, many psychologists and educators emphasize that a number of measures should be used, including tests, quizzes, projects, portfolios, classroom observations, and so on.
-Also, the tests used as part of NCLB don't measure creativity, motivation, persistence, flexible thinking, or social skills (Stiggins, 2008).
-Critics point out that teachers end up spending far too much class time "teaching to the test" by drilling students and having them memorize isolated facts at the expense of teaching that focuses on thinking skills, which students need for success in life (Ladd, 2017).
-Also, some individuals are concerned that in the era of No Child Left Behind scant attention is paid to students who are gifted because so much energy is devoted to raising the achievement level of students who are not doing well

-Consider also the implications of the fact that each state is allowed to have different criteria for what constitutes passing or failing grades on tests designated for NCLB inclusion. An analysis of NCLB data indicated that almost every fourth-grade student in Mississippi knows how to read but only half of Massachusetts' students do (Birman & others, 2007). Clearly, Mississippi's standards for passing the reading test are far below those of Massachusetts. In the recent analysis of state-by-state comparisons, many states have taken the safe route by maintaining low standards for passing tests. Thus, while one of NCLB's goals was to raise standards for achievement in U.S. schools, apparently allowing states to set their own standards has had the opposite effect—reducing achievement standards.

-In 2009, the Common Core State Standards Initiative was endorsed by the National Governors Association in an effort to implement more rigorous state guidelines for educating students. The Common Core State Standards specify what students should know and the skills they should develop at each grade level in various content areas (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2017). A large majority of states have agreed to implement the Standards, but they have generated considerable controversy. Critics argue that they are simply a further effort by the federal government to control education and that they emphasize a "one-size-fits-all" approach that pays little attention to individual variations in students. Supporters say that the Standards provide much-needed detailed guidelines and important milestones for students to achieve.

-The most recent initiative in U.S. education is the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that was passed into law in December 2015 and was supposed to be implemented in the 2017-2018 school year (Rothman, 2016). In 2017, the Trump administration still is planning to go forward with ESSA but plans on giving states much more flexibility in implementing the law (Klein, 2017).
The law replaced No Child Left Behind, in the process modifying but not completely eliminating standardized testing. ESSA retains annual testing for reading and writing success in grades 3 to 8, then once more in high school. The new law also allows states to scale back the role that tests have played in holding schools accountable for student achievement. And schools must use at least one nonacademic factor—such as student engagement—when tracking schools' success.

-Other aspects of the new law include still requiring states and districts to improve their lowest-performing schools and to ensure that they improve their work with historically underperforming students, such as English-language learners, ethnic minority students, and students with a disability. Also, states and districts are required to put in place challenging academic standards, although they can opt out of state standards involving Common Core. However, with changing political control in the federal government, it remains to be seen if the ESSA educational policy will be enacted.

-Many children in poverty face problems that present barriers to their learning. They might have parents who don't set high educational standards for them, who are incapable of reading to them, or who don't have enough money to pay for educational materials and experiences, such as books and trips to zoos and museums. They might be malnourished or live in areas where crime and violence are a way of life. One study revealed that the longer children experienced poverty, the more detrimental the poverty was to their cognitive development (Najman & others, 2009).

-Compared with schools in higher-income areas, schools in low-income areas are more likely to have a high proportion of students with low achievement test scores, low graduation rates, and a smaller proportion of students going to college; they also are more likely to have young teachers with less experience; and they are more likely to encourage rote learning. Too few schools in low-income neighborhoods provide students with environments that are conducive to learning. Many of the schools' buildings and classrooms are old and crumbling. These are the types of undesirable conditions Jonathan Kozol (2005) observed in many inner-city schools, including the South Bronx in New York City, as described at the beginning of the chapter.

-Schools and school programs are the focus of some poverty interventions (Dragoset & others, 2017). In a recent intervention with first-generation immigrant children attending high-poverty schools, the City Connects program was successful in improving children's math and reading achievement at the end of elementary school (Dearing & others, 2016). The program is directed by a full-time school counselor or social worker in each school. Annual reviews of children's needs are conducted during the first several months of the school year. Then site coordinators and teachers collaborate to develop a student support plan that might include an after-school program, tutoring, mentoring, or family counseling. For children identified as having intense needs (about 8 to 10 percent), a wider team of professionals becomes involved, possibly including school psychologists, principals, nurses, and/or community agency staff, to create additional supports.

-Might intervention with families of children living in poverty improve children's school performance? In an experimental study, Aletha Huston and her colleagues (2006; Gupta, Thornton, & Huston, 2008) evaluated the effects of New Hope—a program designed to increase parental employment and reduce family poverty—on adolescent development. They randomly assigned families with 6- to 10-year-old children living in poverty to the New Hope program or to a control group. New Hope offered adults who were living in poverty and were employed 30 or more hours a week benefits that were designed to increase family income (a wage supplement that ensured that net income increased as parents earned more) and to provide work supports through subsidized child care (for any child under age 13) and health insurance. Management services were provided to New Hope participants to assist them in job searches and other needs. The New Hope program was available to the experimental group families for three years (until the children were 9 to 13 years old).
Five years after the program began and two years after it had ended, the program's effects on the children were examined when they were 11 to 15 years old. Compared with adolescents in the control group, New Hope adolescents were more competent at reading, had better school performance, were less likely to be in special education classes, had more positive social skills, and were more likely to be in formal after-school arrangements. New Hope parents reported better psychological well-being and a greater sense of self-efficacy in managing their adolescents than control group parents did. In further assessment, the influence of the New Hope program on 9- to 19-year-olds after they left the program was evaluated (McLoyd & others, 2011). Positive outcomes especially occurred for African American boys, who became more optimistic about their future employment and career prospects after experiencing the New Hope program.

-Turn the class into a jigsaw classroom. When Elliot Aronson was a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, the school system contacted him for ideas on how to reduce the increasing racial tension in classrooms. Aronson (1986) developed the concept of a "jigsaw classroom," in which students from different cultural backgrounds are placed in a cooperative group in which they have to construct different parts of a project to reach a common goal. Aronson used the term jigsaw because he likened the technique to a group of students cooperating to put different pieces together to complete a jigsaw puzzle. How might this work? Team sports, drama productions, and music performances are examples of contexts in which students participate cooperatively to reach a common goal; however, the jigsaw technique also lends itself to group science projects, history reports, and other learning experiences with a variety of subject matter.

-Encourage students to have positive personal contact with diverse other students. Mere contact does not do the job of improving relationships with diverse others. For example, busing ethnic minority students to predominantly non-Latino White schools, or vice versa, has not reduced prejudice or improved interethnic relations. What matters is what happens after children get to school. Especially beneficial in improving interethnic relations is sharing one's worries, successes, failures, coping strategies, interests, and other personal information with people of other ethnicities. When this happens, people tend to look at others as individuals rather than as members of a homogeneous group.

-Reduce bias. Teachers can reduce bias by displaying images of children from diverse ethnic and cultural groups, selecting play materials and classroom activities that encourage cultural understanding, helping students resist stereotyping, and working with parents to reduce children's exposure to bias and prejudice at home.

-View the school and community as a team. James Comer (1988, 2004, 2006) advocates a community, team approach as the best way to educate children. Three important aspects of the Comer Project for Change are (1) a governance and management team that develops a comprehensive school plan, assessment strategy, and staff development plan; (2) a mental health or school support team; and (3) a parents' program. Comer believes that the entire school community should have a cooperative rather than an adversarial attitude. The Comer program is currently operating in more than 600 schools in 26 states.

-Be a competent cultural mediator. Teachers can play a powerful role as cultural mediators by being sensitive to biased content in materials and classroom interactions, learning more about different ethnic groups, being sensitive to children's ethnic attitudes, viewing students of color positively, and thinking of positive ways to get parents of color more involved as partners with teachers in educating children