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Two studies examined the inductive potential of various social categories among 144 kindergarten, 2nd‐, and 6th‐grade Israeli children from 3 sectors: secular Jews, religious Jews, and Muslim Arabs. Study 1—wherein social categories were labeled—found that ethnic categories were the most inductively powerful, especially for religious Jewish children. Study 2—wherein no social category labels were provided—found no differences across sectors either in the inductive potential of ethnic categories or in children’s capacity to visually recognize social categories. These results stress the importance of labels and cultural background in children’s beliefs about social categories. The implications of these findings for accounts of the development of social essentialism are discussed.

Adults and children seem to essentialize certain social categories. Three studies investigated whether, and how, exposure to ethnic diversity affects this bias. Participants were 516 kindergarten, 2nd grade, and 6th grade Israeli Jewish and Arab children attending regular (mono-cultural) or integrated schools. Study 1 revealed that exposure increased the salience of ethnicity, especially for Jewish children. Study 2 showed no differences among groups at kindergarten regarding the relevance of recalling a story character's ethnicity, but by 2nd grade, Jewish children attending integrated schools were the most likely to mention such information. Finally, Study 3 revealed that while all kindergarteners started off at a similar level of essentialism towards ethnicity, exposure affected Arab, but especially Jewish, children's essentialist beliefs. Moreover, there were negative correlations between the salience of and essentialism towards ethnicity. Thus, interethnic exposure alleviated children's essentialist bias towards ethnicity and did so via making children aware of, rather than blind to, ethnic categories.

How is a child's successful participation in science learning shaped by their family's support? We focus on the critical time period of early adolescents, testing (i) whether the child's perception of family support is important for both choice preferences to participate in optional learning experiences and engagement during science learning, and (ii) whether the effects on choice preferences and engagement are mediated through effects on child interest and self‐efficacy in science. Structural equation modeling is applied to data from two different contexts, one examining engagement during a science and technology center visit and the other examining engagement and learning during classroom instruction. Models from both datasets suggest that early adolescents' perceived family support for learning is associated with their choices for and engagement in science learning, and that these effects are mediated by effects on child interest and self‐efficacy in science. Further, children's family physical resources (e.g., available learning spaces and materials) predicts their perceived family support, but is not separately connected to either interest or self‐efficacy. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 53: 450–472, 2016

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