Can the Arts Get Under the Skin? Arts and Cortisol for Economically Disadvantaged Children

Family socioeconomic status and the parent-child relationship in Chinese adolescents: the multiple serial mediating roles of visual art activities

BACKGROUND

In light of the recent policy reform in China, the present study aims to investigate the potential impact of family SES on the quality of the parent-child relationship (PCR) through the serial mediating role of participation in organized visual art activities in privately owned centers (VAA1) and parent-supervised visual art activities (VAA2) across genders.

METHOD

A cross-sectional study was conducted in anonymous province located in the southwestern part of China. A total of 1624 primary school students aged 7 to 14 years were recruited through a random sampling technique. Subsequently, anonymous survey responses were taken from all students. Multiple serial mediation analysis was performed by using AMOS 21.0 software to attain the primary aim of the study.

RESULT

According to the total sample model result, SES has a significant direct effect on the parent-child relationship (β = 0.47, p < 0.001), children's participation in VAA1 (β = 0.197, p < 0.001) and VAA2 (β = 0.269, p < 0.001). Moreover, the mediation model result indicates that SES has a stronger indirect effect on the parent-child relationship through a mediating role of VAA1 (βgirl = 0.08, p < 0.01; βboys = 0.04, p < 0.01) for female than male samples. However, the mediating effect of VVA2 between SES and the parent-child relationship in the female (β = 0.08, p < 0.001) and male (β = 0.08, p < 0.01) models is equal, although female gender is highly significant. Ultimately, the serial mediation analysis result affirms that the serially mediating role of VAA1 and VAA2 between SES and the parent-child relationship was equal across genders (βboys = 0.001, p < 0.001; βgirls = 0.001, p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION

Unlike previous studies, this study's multigroup model shows that both male and female children can equally restore their relationship with their parents by having substantial participation in both VAA1 and VAA2. Thus, parents ought to play the main role in facilitating and supporting children's visual art activities without parenting that shows a gender bias.

Planting the Seeds: Orchestral Music Education as a Context for Fostering Growth Mindsets

Growth mindset is an important aspect of children's socioemotional development and is subject to change due to environmental influence. Orchestral music education may function as a fertile context in which to promote growth mindset; however, this education is not widely available to children facing economic hardship. This study examined whether participation in a program of orchestral music education was associated with higher levels of overall growth mindset and greater change in levels of musical growth mindset among children placed at risk by poverty. After at least 2 years of orchestral participation, students reported significantly higher levels of overall growth mindset than their peers; participating students also reported statistically significant increases in musical growth mindset regardless of the number of years that they were enrolled in orchestral music education. These findings have implications for future research into specific pedagogical practices that may promote growth mindset in the context of orchestral music education and more generally for future studies of the extra-musical benefits of high-quality music education.

Addressing educational inequalities and promoting learning through studies of stress physiology in elementary school students

To be ready to learn, children need to be focused, engaged, and able to bounce back from setbacks. However, many children come to school with heightened or diminished physiological arousal due to exposure to poverty-related risks. While stress physiology plays a role in explaining how adversity relates to processes that support students' cognitive development, there is a lack of studies of physiological stress response in educational settings. This review integrates relevant studies and offers future directions for research on the role of stress physiology in the school adaptation of elementary school students, focusing on these important questions: (a) What are the links between physiological stress response and learning-related skills and behaviors, and do they vary as a function of proximal and distal experiences outside of school? (b) How are school experiences associated with students' physiological stress response and related cognitive and behavioral adaptations? (c) How can we leverage measures of students' physiological stress response in evaluations of school-based interventions to better support the school success of every student? We hope to stimulate a new wave of research that will advance the science of developmental stress physiology, as well as improve the application of these findings in educational policy and practice.

Towards an understanding of neurophysiological self-regulation in early childhood: A heuristic and a new approach

Self-regulation in early childhood encompasses both "top down," volitional processes, as well as the "bottom up" activity of three neurophysiological systems: the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. In this paper we briefly review the structure, function, and early development of each of these systems and then explain why neurophysiological self-regulation is most accurately defined as a function of their joint activity. We note that while there are a number of predictive models that employ this definition, the field would benefit from a straightforward heuristic and aligned methods of visualization and analysis. We then present one such heuristic, which we call neurophysiological space, and outline how it may facilitate a new, collaborative approach to building a better understanding of self-regulation in early childhood. We conclude with a presentation of early education as one setting in which our heuristic and methods could be applied.