Affective teacher–child relationships have frequently been investigated in school settings, but less attention has been devoted to these relationships in after-school care. This study explored caregiver- (N = 90) and child-informed reports (N = 90) of the affective caregiver–child relationship (N = 180 dyads) in Dutch after-school care, exploring gender differences at caregiver and child level and the relationship with a gender match between children and caregivers. The caregivers and children reported relatively high levels of closeness and relatively low level of conflict and dependency/autonomy support, irrespective of gender. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that a gender match between child and caregiver was associated with teacher-reported closeness: levels were highest in female-girl dyads and lowest in male-boy dyads. Further, boys indicated the highest levels of autonomy in male-boy dyads, whereas girls indicated the lowest levels in female-girl dyads. Masculinity of staff was associated with more child-reported autonomy support, whereas femininity predicted caregiver-reported closeness in the relationship.
Research has shown that female students cannot profit as much as male students can from cooperative learning in physics, especially in mixed-gender dyads. This study has explored the influence of partner gender on female students’ learning achievement, interaction and the problem-solving process during cooperative learning. In Shanghai, a total of 50 students (26 females and 24 males), drawn from two classes of a high school, took part in the study. Students were randomly paired, and there were three research groups: mixed-gender dyads (MG), female–female dyads (FF) and male–male dyads (MM). Analysis of students’ pre- and post-test performances revealed that female students in the single-gender condition solved physics problems more effectively than did those in the mixed-gender condition, while the same was not the case for male students. We further explored the differences between female and male communication styles, and content among the three research groups. It showed that the females’ interaction content and problem-solving processes were more sensitive to partner gender than were those for males. This might explain why mixed-gender cooperation in physics disadvantages females in high schools.
MULTIFILE
We used a validated agent-based model—Socio-Emotional CONcern DynamicS (SECONDS)—to model real-time playful interaction between a child diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and its parent. SECONDS provides a real-time (second-by-second) virtual environment that could be used for clinical trials and testingprocess-orientedexplanationsofASDsymptomatology.Weconductednumerical experiments with SECONDS (1) for internal model validation comparing two parental behavioral strategies for stimulating social development in ASD (play-centered vs. initiative-centered) and (2) for empirical case-based model validation. We compared 2,000 simulated play sessions of two particular dyads with (second-by-second) time-series observations within 29 play sessions of a real parent-child dyad with ASD on six variables related to maintaining and initiating play. Overall, both simuladistributions. Given the idiosyncratic behaviors expected in ASD, the observed correspondence is non-trivial. Our results demonstrate the applicability of SECONDS to parent-child dyads in ASD. In the future, SECONDS could help design interventions for parental care in ASDted dyads provided a better fit to the observed dyad than reference null
