Effects of transition from elementary school to junior high school on early adolescents' self-esteem and perceived competence

Early adolescents' self-esteem and perceived competence in the cognitive, social, and physical domains were examined across the transition from elementary school to junior high school. Self-esteem and perceived social and physical competence were either stable or increased for most children. Cognitive competence was unchanged. It was concluded that, in general, early adolescents' perceptions of self-esteem and competence are not adversely affected by the transition.     

Reading minds: the relation between children's mental state knowledge and their metaknowledge about reading

The relation between children's mental state knowledge and metaknowledge about reading was examined in 2 studies. In Study 1, 196 children (mean age = 9 years) were tested for verbal ability (VA), metaknowledge about reading, and mental state words in a story task. In Study 2, the results of Study 1 were extended by using a cross-lagged design and by investigating older children (N = 71, mean ages = 10 years at Time 1 and 11 years at Time 2) for mental state knowledge, metaknowledge about reading, and VA. Results showed a significant relation between early cognitive (but not emotion) mental state knowledge and later metaknowledge about reading, controlling for VA. Results suggest close links between different aspects of children's knowledge about the mind.     

At their children's expense: How parents' gender stereotypes affect their children's reading outcomes

Following expectancy-value theory, we investigated the role parents' reading-related gender stereotypes favoring girls play in explaining students' reading-related competence beliefs, intrinsic task values, and achievement. Drawing on a sample of 1508 students (49% girls, age at T1: 10.89 years) from 60 schools in Germany, we collected data at the beginning of Grade 5 and in the second half of Grade 6 using parent and student questionnaires. Structural equation modeling yielded two main results: First, parents' gender stereotypes favoring girls in reading and their sons' reading-related competence beliefs and intrinsic task values were negatively related. Second, we found indirect effects from parents' gender stereotypes through boys' reading-related intrinsic task values and competence beliefs to boys' reading achievement. Our results provide evidence for the assumption that parents' gender stereotypes are important in the perpetuation of gender differences, as they may affect the development of children's competence beliefs, intrinsic task values, and achievement.     

Intrinsic motivation,perceived competence and classroom engagement as longitudinal predictors of adolescent reading achievement

This study investigated the effects of intrinsic motivation, perceived competence, classroom engagement and extrinsic motivation on reading development among youth. Using a nationally representative sample of students in the US, the researchers followed students longitudinally from fifth to eighth grade. Reading achievement was measured using composite tests of vocabulary, reading comprehension and sight-word identification. Hierarchical linear regression was used to examine the effect of students’ perceived intrinsic motivation and competence, as well as teacher rated classroom engagement in the 5th grade, on reading achievement in the 8th grade. Important control variables were utilised such as gender, family SES, race/ethnicity and prior reading achievement. The results showed that intrinsic motivation to read, perceived competence and engagement in 5th grade significantly predict reading achievement in 8th grade. The importance students placed upon grades also predicted reading development. Implications for promoting intrinsic motivation and strong engagement in schools are discussed.     

Pedagogical content beliefs about reading instruction and their relation to gains in student achievement

Teachers’ pedagogical content beliefs about reading instruction are likely to predict progress in student achievement. Thus, in this study, 15 pre-service teachers gave reading promotion to low-performing sixth- and seventh-graders over a time period of 6 months. The pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content beliefs were then related to their students’ reading achievement gains. In contradiction to previous findings, the results demonstrate direct-transmissive beliefs to be positively related with student achievement. Finally, whether there is an influence of practical teaching experiences on the development of pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content beliefs was examined. For that reason, the belief development during the 6-month period was compared between pre-service teachers with and without teaching experience. Results show teaching pre-service teachers’ beliefs to have developed away from constructivistic positions and toward a direct-transmissive direction. The beliefs of student teachers without teaching experience, on the contrary, tended to slightly develop in diametrically opposed directions. Implications of the results are discussed.     

The cognitive profile of adult dyslexics and its relation to their reading abilities

The question of which cognitive impairments are primarily associated with dyslexia has been a source of continuous debate. This study examined the cognitive profile of Hebrew-speaking compensated adult dyslexics and investigated whether their cognitive abilities accounted for a unique variance in their reading performance. Sixty-nine young adults with and without dyslexia were administered a battery of tests measuring their reading skills and a number of cognitive abilities. The dyslexics were found to exhibit a generally poor cognitive profile, including their attention, visual working memory, naming, visual perception and speed of processing abilities, with the exception of high executive functions skills. Furthermore, naming speed, visual working memory and attention were significantly associated with decoding and fluency measures and predicted group difference after controlling for phonological skills. The findings point to the contribution of cognitive factors to decoding rate and possibly to the ability of utilizing rapid orthographic processes, thus effecting dyslexics’ reading performance.     

The relationship between children's reading motivation and reading competence

It has been found that motivation is very important to children’s reading competence.This paper intended to study intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and find their relationship with children’s reading competence.In order to do so,previous investigations about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation were critically reviewed,and their results were discussed in this paper.     

Communication competence in reading and learning disabilities

Conclusion The evidence indicates that learning-disabled children show pervasive and enduring language problems across a wide variety of language tasks. The studies suggest that the problems experienced by learning and reading-disabled children may fall into the categories of phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics as well as nonverbal communication. In terms of nonverbal communication, these children are less accurate in interpreting nonverbal auditory and visual cues. In phonology, it appears that they are less skilled in detecting the segments of single words and thus have difficulty establishing phoneme to grapheme correspondence. In the area of syntax, learning-disabled males are less skilled in dealing with inflection and the comprehension and creation of complex sentences. In semantics, they are less adequate than nondisabled children in defining words, creating sentences, and classifying objects into categories. They show less adequate sentence production, are less skilled at recognizing their errors, and are significantly slower in generating verbal responses. Finally, there is one study that suggests that learning-disabled children may be discriminated by their use of language in social situations. This paper was presented at the 29th Annual Conference of The Orton Society at Minneapolis, November, 1978.     

Skills needed for reading comprehension of physics texts and their relation to problem-solving ability

This article reports an investigation of some of the skills needed for the critical reading of physics texts. To assess these skills a reading comprehension test was developed that combines features of errordetection and true–false–unreported tests. This test was administered to college students of physics, and the results were analyzed statistically to determine the separability of the skills and their hierarchical ranking. It was found that the skill required to comprehend texts in continuous format is of a higher level than and separable from the skill required to comprehend texts in the form of a separated list of statements. The skill required to discriminate unreported statements from the others (true and false) was found to be of a higher level than and separable from the skills required to make the other discriminations. The relation between the students' reading comprehension skills and their problem-solving ability was also investigated. Students' scores on reading comprehension of texts that require a very low problem-solving ability were found to be uncorrelated to their grades on solving problems that require a very low decoding ability. This implies that the two abilities are independent.     

The development of reading interest and its relation to reading ability

The development of interest in reading and its relationship to reading ability was examined longitudinally in 117 children in Grades 1–3. Interest in reading was measured by eight items from the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey. Less able readers had lower interest in reading, but their development was parallel to that of more able readers. Interest in reading in Grade 1 was weakly correlated with Grade 3 reading ability, but correlations were lower for interest measured in Grades 2 and 3. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated weak and inconsistent effects of reading interest on reading ability after controlling general cognitive ability, SES, phonological awareness and naming speed. It is concluded that interest in reading has only a weak relationship to reading ability in the early elementary years, and that much of that relationship overlaps with the effects of other more powerful predictors.     

Rural adolescents' reading motivation,achievement and behavior across transition to high school

The authors examined 1,781 rural students' reading motivation and behavior across the transition from middle to high school. Using expectancy-value theory, they investigated how motivational variables predicted changes in reading behavior and achievement across the transition in terms of their expectancies, values, and out-of-school reading behaviors. A repeated measures analysis of variance indicated significant increases in vocabulary, intrinsic value, and out-of-school reading, whereas significant decreases were found in attainment value. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated students' subjective expectancy for success was a significant predictor of increases in both comprehension and vocabulary scores. Students' utility value interacted with intrinsic value in predicting reading comprehension scores. In terms of change in students' reading behavior, their perceptions of intrinsic value and utility value were significant predictors. Gender interacted significantly with expectancies in predicting behaviors. Findings have implications for instructional support, particularly as it relates to reading motivation across the transition from middle to high school.     

The print exposure of teacher candidates in relation to their achievement and self-ratings of early reading experiences

Reading and Writing - This study examined the print exposure of teacher candidates (N?=?195) in relation to their GPAs, achievement in reading and writing on the SAT, and their...     

词汇输入过程和二语词汇能力的发展

以学习英语的中国学生为对象,通过对概念表征问题的探讨,指出概念表征形成和发展的动态过程即第二语言词汇能力的发展路径。对本科生口语测试中不恰当词汇信息的分析,表明我国学生英语词汇能力发展过程中存在障碍,对其根源进行探究并就如何促进学生二语词汇能力的发展提出一些建议。