Fathering styles in a traditional culture and its association with marital relationship: A latent profile analysis with a nationally representative sample.

This study had two main objectives. The first goal was to examine fathers' parenting styles in a society with traditional patriarchal values. The second goal was to understand the extent to which marital relationship variables (i.e., marital satisfaction and spousal support) are related with the identified fathering profiles. The theoretical and empirical underpinnings of the "parenting styles" literature that form the foundation of the research on parent-child dynamics are still mainly based on data collected only from mothers. This weakness of the literature on fathering typologies is further accompanied by the scarcity of data on fathers' parenting practices from non-Western contexts. To achieve the study aims, a latent profile analysis based on warmth and control dimensions of parenting was performed using a nationally representative sample of 1070 urban fathers in Turkey. Using scores on six parenting behavior variables (i.e., warmth, punishment, inductive reasoning, positive parenting, discipline and teaching responsibilities, time and talking together), results revealed four fathering profiles: "authoritative" (30%), "average" (45%), "uninvolved" (16%), and "disciplining-distant" (8%). Furthermore, the results showed that the fathering profiles significantly differed from each other on the marital satisfaction and spousal support scores. Results highlight the importance of investigating fathering behaviors and their predictors in different cultures.

Does learning to code influence cognitive skills of elementary school children? Findings from a randomized experiment.

BACKGROUND: Coding has been added to school curricula in several countries, being one of the necessary competencies of the 21st century. Although it has also been suggested to foster the development of several cognitive skills such as computational thinking and problem-solving, studies on the effects of coding are very limited, provide mixed results, and lack causal evidence. AIM: This study aims to evaluate the impact of a learn-to-code programme on three cognitive skills in children: computational thinking, fluid intelligence, and spatial orientation, using a randomized trial. SAMPLE: One hundred seventy-four (n = 81 girls) 4th-grade children participated in the study. METHODS: Children were randomly assigned to one of the three 10-week learning programmes: learn-to-code (treatment of interest), mathematics (another STEM-related comparison treatment), and reading (control). Children responded to paper-pencil computational thinking, and spatial orientation measurements, and face-to-face matrix reasoning task at pre- and post-tests. RESULTS: Results showed that children's computational thinking scores increased significantly only in the learn-to-code condition. Fluid intelligence significantly increased in all conditions, possibly due to a practice effect. The spatial orientation did not improve in any of the conditions. CONCLUSION: These findings suggested that learning to code can be selectively beneficial for the development of computational thinking skills while not effective for spatial reasoning and fluid intelligence.