Peer Tutored Paired Reading: outcome data from ten projects

Abstract In the context of a large scale dissemination project, ten different peer tutor projects were conducted, and procedures and outcomes are reviewed in this paper. Pre‐and post‐test data are reported for all studies, while four studies also have baseline data and two studies have comparison group data. Two studies have follow‐up data for the short and long term respectively. The evidence reviewed suggests that peer tutored paired reading accelerates children's reading progress, with peer tutors gaining more than tutees.     

Negotiating the challenge of collaborative writing: learning from one writing group's mutiny

With continuing pressure to publish or perish, interventions such as writing groups are increasingly part of the academic landscape. In this paper, we discuss our writing group's experiment with collaborative writing, which came unstuck as simmering concerns led to a mutiny within the group. The mutiny provided insights into tensions that are inevitably present in writing groups and collaborative writing exercises but are seldom written about. We explore these tensions via a collaborative autoethnography, drawing on published literature on writing groups and collaborative writing. The mutiny revealed three key dynamics. Experienced voices can have an important role to play but these voices need to be moderated so that other voices might be recognised and valued. Pleasure and productivity are two necessary components for sustaining writing groups and writing collaborations. Finally, hierarchies in the academic context are inescapable but they can be renegotiated so that more enabling power relations can be generated.     

Perspectives on inclusive education: learning from each other

Many courses of study are currently available that address inclusive education and, increasingly, distance education is seen as a flexible and appropriately inclusive way to deliver such courses. In this article a team of colleagues, Kieron Sheehy, Jonathan Rix, Melanie Nind and Katy Simmons, discusses the development of an Open University course, E243 Inclusive Education: Learning from Each Other, which was launched in February 2004. The team reflects on their own process of learning from each other and from the rich network of people involved, mirroring some of the course themes in their own journeys. Collaborative learning became a key theme within the course, both as a method for teaching within the ‘inclusive classroom’ and also as the process for producing a course in a contested and challenging area. This experience allowed the team to change and develop their own perspectives on important issues and, it is suggested, allowed the course to include ways in which students could be supported in having the same opportunity.     

Antecedents to reading disability: Preschool language development and literacy experiences of children from dyslexic families

In a longitudinal study of the relation between preschool development and later reading abilities, children with dyslexic parents and/or older siblings were compared to children with no family incidence of dyslexia. Many children from dyslexic families developed reading problems by the end of the second grade, and these poor readers were characterized chiefly by weaker early syntactic and phonological skills and by less frequent exposure to books during their preschool years than the preschoolers who became normal readers. Some implications of the results for etiological theories of dyslexia are discussed.     

The academic writing of community college remedial students: Text and learner variables

Community college remedial reading studentscomposed an informational report from sources,a task commonly assigned in higher educationthat integrally combines reading and writingprocesses. Productivity, use of source text,reproductions, accuracy, and inclusion of keyideas were analyzed as a function of twoexogenous variables, text density (high, low)and domain (health, business), and twoendogenous variables, prior knowledge andgeneral literacy skill. Text densityinteracted with literacy skill forproductivity, and with prior knowledge foraccuracy. Individuals with lower literacy orprior knowledge scores were at a disadvantagewith high but not low density source text. Domain affected productivity, use of source,and inclusion of key ideas: health text wasassociated with superior performance. Domaineffects may be explained by metacognitive ormotivational variables, or differences in thereadability of the source texts. The resultshave implications for instruction aimed atimproving community college students'preparedness for the academic demands of highereducation.     

Making disability visible: How disability studies might transform the medical and science writing classroom

This article describes how disability studies can be used in a medical and science writing class to critically examine the assumptions of scientific discourse. An emerging, interdisciplinary field, disability studies draws on feminist, postmodern, and post‐colonial theory and extends their critiques to the medicalization of disability. Deconstructing the medical model of disability helps students understand how science is socially constructed. After conceptualizing disability studies, this essay discusses sample disability‐related classroom activities, readings, and writing assignments.     

Poetry immersion: Reading,writing and performing with secondary students

In an attempt to counter the culture of high-stakes testing and the instrumental coverage of poetry, the authors designed and taught a sustained, intensive poetry course to secondary students. In this article they advocate a deep genre study of poetry for students and teachers and highlight important principles from their work that are applicable in a variety of teaching contexts.     

Reading Multimodal Texts: Perceptual,Structural and Ideological Perspectives

This article presents a tripartite framework for analyzing multimodal texts. The three analytical perspectives presented include: (1) perceptual, (2) structural, and (3) ideological analytical processes. Using Anthony Browne’s picturebook Piggybook as an example, assertions are made regarding what each analytical perspective brings to the interpretation of multimodal texts and how these perspectives expand readers’ interpretive repertoires. Drawing on diverse fields of inquiry, including semiotics, art theory, visual grammar, communication studies, media literacy, visual literacy and literary theory, the article suggests an expansion of the strategies and analytical perspectives readers being to multimodal texts and visual images. Each perspective is presented as necessary but insufficient in and of itself to provide the necessary foundation for comprehending texts. It is through an expansion of the interpretive strategies and perspectives that readers bring to a multimodal text, focusing on visual, textual, and design elements that readers will become more proficient in their interpretive processes.     

从衔接和主位化角度解读四级阅读文

对于非英语专业的学生来说,阅读能力一直是应该掌握的主要学习技能。然而,英语教师总是抱怨学生的阅读比他们预期的速度慢,理解能力底。本文试图运用衔接及主位理论,并结合认知的思维过程,来探索解读四级文的有效方法。     

Collaborative writing in engineering: Perspectives from research and implications for undergraduate education

In engineering, like in many other disciplines, collaborative writing (CW) has been identified as a central practice in both the academy and industry. A number of studies have shown that both students and professionals in this field write most discipline-specific genres collaboratively. Despite its centrality, CW in engineering is still an under-researched area with very few empirical studies on how it happens as situated practice. This article reports on a study that used a variety of data sets as its empirical base to examine CW in four schools of the faculty of engineering at a university in the UK. It also reports on the views of CW in the workplace that lecturers involved in industry hold. The article aims at contributing to the understanding of CW in engineering by identifying its role, nature and dynamics. It also examines pedagogical implications resulting from the study with a view to making a contribution to developments in writing in engineering education. The article finishes by making a number of recommendations for future research.     

Language competency,dyslexia, and learning disability

Annals of Dyslexia -