critique of a journal article
Howes, Hamilton, & Matheson (1994) hypothesised that good child-teacher interactions would be positively correlated with good child-peer interactions. They drew from John Bulby's attachment theory and from recent studies of teacher-child relationships. While Bulby primarily focuses upon how the parent-child relationship affects the forming of later relationships, recent studies observe the influence of the teacher-child relationship. The article's introduction discusses the inspiration for the researchers' studies; however, theoretical explanations for their work are vague. The researchers make loose associations between Bulby's work and recent studies in attachment. Attachment theory seems irrelevant to what the researchers expect to find in the study.Research Methods and Design and their Limitations Graduate students, who did not know the study's hypothesis, met with 48 children over three years. Each graduate student observed a child every six months but never saw the same child twice. Research Methods and their Limitations This study used a naturalistic observation method, where the graduate students would simply watch their subjects' behaviour. Naturalistic observation is limited in that the researcher has little control
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Among teacher socialisation and child-peer relationships, positive mediation was positively correlated with better child-peer relationships in time one and two. They predicted that positive mediation during time one would have the greatest impact and were partially correct. Negative mediation was positively correlated with hostility and withdrawal and was negatively correlated with complex play, enactment, and attributions. They predicted that negative mediation for preschoolers would have the greatest impact, but it was only true in the case of complex play. Overall, negative mediation had the greatest influence on time two. The researchers used a longitudinal design. They studied subjects over three years. They explained that a longitudinal design was more appropriate than a cross-sectional design. Dependency and security measures are blurred in infancy; however, by the time of preschool, the behaviours are more independently distinct. The researchers wanted to observe the transition. Longitudinal studies are limited, in that subject mortality is high. In this study, researchers lost twenty-four of their subjects when these children had to move away. They recognise this limitation in their report. Though
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 871
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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