On November 13, DEP held the first brown bag academic salon. Dr. Xin Zhao, the chenhui scholar from the department, presented a wonderful report entitled preschool children's social cognitive development and classroom observation. About the report, the faculty in the department had a heated discussion. This brown bag is hosted by associate professor Shufeng Ma.  

Brown bag session is often held in foreign universities, during which researchers discuss the latest research projects and project progress over lunch.

Xin Zhao

Is the Chenhui scholar of DEP, holding a bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and Economy from Tsinghua University, and a doctor's degree in developmental psychology from Cornell University, the US. Her research areas including children's social cognitive development, cross-cultural psychology, conceptual development and moral development.

In the report, Dr. Xin Zhao firstly introduced previous studies on children's social cognitive development and related studies on classroom observation of early childhood education, and pointed out the importance of studying children's social cognitive development from family, teacher and classroom.

Next, Dr. Xin Zhao introduced an ongoing empirical study that attempted to explore the relationship between children's social cognitive development and their classroom performance, as well as the influence of teachers' and parents' perceptions on children's social cognitive development. Dr. Xin Zhao introduced the social cognitive tasks used in the study, classroom behavior observation methods, classroom and parent questionnaires, and Shared some preliminary data analysis results and some problems encountered in the study.

 Finally, the faculty of the department had an in-depth discussion on research methods and data processing, and gave effective suggestions from various perspectives. In addition, some ideas for further collaboration have emerged among the research groups.