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Children all over the world learn language, yet the contexts in which they do so vary substantially. This variation needs to be systematically quantified to build robust and generalizable theories of language acquisition. We compared communicative interactions between parents and their 2-year-old children (N = 99 families) during mealtime across five cultural settings (Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Germany, and Japan) and coded the amount of talk and gestures as well as their conversational embedding (interlocutors, function, and themes). We found a comparable pattern of communicative interactions across cultural settings, which were modified in ways that are consistent with local norms and values. These results suggest that children encounter similarly structured communicative environments across diverse cultural contexts and will inform theories of language learning.

Introduction: This paper contributes to the research on teacher burnout by distinguishing between two aspects of work demands that are usually merged in the "workload" construct: the quantity of the demands (quantitative demands) and the cognitive effort they require (cognitive demands). Such a distinction may offer insight into how educational administrators should manage certain types of work demands. Method: In an international sample of 209 kindergarten, primary and lower secondary teachers working in 110 schools from four different countries (Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Spain), we administered the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire II (COPSOQII). We conducted three separate multiple regressions in which the work conditions (COPSOQII) were set (forced entry) as predictors of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment (MBI). Results: We found that quantitative and cognitive demands predict teacher burnout differently: while quantitative demands predict emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, cognitive demands play a protective role in relation to those two components and also predict personal accomplishment. Additionally, we found that emotional demands positively predict emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, and negatively predict personal accomplishment. We also found that support from colleagues and community positively predicts personal accomplishment, but shows no significant relationship with either emotional exhaustion or depersonalization. Discussion and Conclusion: Results suggest that the distinction between the quantity of demands and the cognitive effort they require is meaningful and important for future research and practice in the field of teaching. One important implication for educational administration is that the quantity of work assigned to teachers should be kept relatively low but, at the same time, this work should be cognitively activating and demanding.

Humans, unlike any other species, have adapted to diverse environments across the globe due to cultural knowledge, skills, and practices. In early childhood, parent–child interactions play a pivotal role in cultural learning, but controversies about what constitutes teaching have stymied the systematic assessment of variation and similarities in parental teaching across cultures. We used a functional definition of teaching as behavior that evolved to facilitate learning in others and observed parents and their two-year-old child (N = 106) in a standardized setting (mealtime) in five diverse cultural contexts (rural: Brazil, Ecuador; urban: Argentina, Germany, Japan). Detailed coding of parental teaching (8520 teaching events in 1898 min of interactions) revealed that six teaching behaviors (prompts to do, prompts to stop, abstract communication of knowledge, demonstrations, providing choices, negative feedback) occurred frequently (> 5%) across contexts. At the same time, we found that the relative frequencies of these behaviors varied between contexts: Parents in rural contexts frequently used prompts towards their children. Parents in urban contexts often used abstract communication, demonstrations, and the provision of choices. We also identified nuanced differences between the urban samples regarding parental demonstrations (Japan) and the provision of choices (Germany). Our findings suggest that parents from all contexts mainly relied on a set of six teaching behaviors but that there was cross-cultural variation in how frequently behaviors occurred. Our study provides a cultural map of children's early learning experiences which lay the ontogenetic foundation for human cultural diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]