Development of students’ text-picture integration and reading competence across grades 5–7 in a three-tier secondary school system: A longitudinal study

375 students from 24 randomly selected classes of a three-tier secondary school system were tested in a longitudinal study for their text-picture integration and pure reading competence as well as verbal and spatial intelligence at grades 5–7. Data were analyzed according to the integrated model of text and picture comprehension using hierarchical linear modeling techniques. Results indicate that text-picture integration comprises higher spatial cognitive demands than pure reading. School tiers differed in terms of competency levels, but also in terms of growth rates of text-picture integration competence. Differences between lower tiers and higher tiers for text-picture integration competence became smaller from grade to grade, whereas developmental trajectories of reading competence ran parallel to each other. The study reveals that the skills for the conjoint processing of text and pictures develop in a way that might help especially poorer students in lower school tiers to catch up with their mates in higher tiers as compared to the competence of pure reading. Text-picture integration seems to provide gradually better opportunities for less capable learners to compensate for previous lags in their learning.     

Making testers out of teachers: the work of a Swedish State Research Institute 1946–1956

Between 1946 and 1956, the Swedish Psychological and Pedagogical Institute (SPPI) organised several summer courses for the purpose of training teachers in intelligence testing. The aim of the courses was to make these teachers the first gatekeepers who would meet and direct the youngest pupils into ordinary classes or into special classes. This paper investigates the course leaders and the participants in these courses, as well as the content taught. It is argued that these testing courses are examples of a shift in assessment in education from trusting teachers’ ‘judgements’ of pupils’ skills and abilities to externally standardising the ‘measure’ of these merits. It is also argued that researchers and teachers were part of a larger change in the politics of IQ. SPPI’s role within this process was that of a new and modern institution serving society: making IQ testing a public familiarity and the stratification of children that often followed from it.     

Preliminary impacts of the “Learning to Read in a Healing Classroom” intervention on teacher well-being in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

This article examines the impacts of a partial year of implementation of Learning to Read in a Healing Classroom (LRHC), a curricular and social-emotional teacher professional development intervention in southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, on teacher professional well-being. Using a cluster-randomized control trial, this study assesses LRHC impacts on a sample of 346 teachers from 64 primary schools. We find statistically significant increases in job dissatisfaction for female teachers and increases in motivation for the least experienced teachers. Implications are discussed for the role of teacher professional development and well-being in improving education in low resource and conflict-affected contexts.     

Teacher Learning and Collaborative Action Research: Generating a “Knowledge-of-Practice” in the Context of Science Education

In this case study, teacher inquiry groups from 3 school districts engaged and transformed various facets of their professional knowledge and practice in the context of science education. To examine the nature of teacher learning, a 3-part teacher knowledge and learning framework, proposed by Cochran-Smith and Lytle in 1999, was adopted (knowledge-for-practice, knowledge-in-practice, and knowledge-of-practice). While 16 school-based inquiry groups participated in the collaborative action research project, one case study involving a primary teacher, Katrina, is highlighted to illustrate outcomes related to the role of collaborative inquiry in supporting teacher learning, contextual issues and concerns that impact teachers’ daily classroom practice, and the types of knowledge generated by teachers within collaborative inquiry communities.     

Constructing “world-class” as “global”: a case study of the National University of Singapore

This article investigates the ways in which newly-established higher education institutions (HEIs) position themselves as “world-class” through constructing themselves as “global”. With the escalating “free market” and competitive forces arising from the marketization of education, most universities see a construction of themselves as global universities as a necessity, where the global mark is valued as a signal of quality across markets and thus positions the universities as world-class. This study specifically examines how one very successful emerging university, the National University of Singapore, constructs and promotes itself as a global institution through three strategies.     

Students’ views of assessment in project-led engineering education: findings from a case study in Portugal

According to the demands of the Bologna process, new educational methods and strategies are needed in order to enhance student-centred learning. Project work is one of those approaches. This paper aims to evaluate the impact of project-led education (PLE) on students’ learning processes and outcomes, within the context of a first-year engineering programme. It explores students’ perceptions about assessment procedures and processes. Data collection was based on individual surveys at the end and the beginning of each PLE edition and through focus groups, after a period of six months. Findings are presented according to emerging themes from the data analysis, focusing mainly on students’ perspectives of learning and assessment, the role of formative and summative assessments in PLE and their impact on learning. Implications for improving assessment practices are discussed.     

Is the cure worse than the disease? A longitudinal study on the effect of grade retention in secondary education on achievement and academic self-concept

Holding students back when they do not meet a specific attainment level is common practice in a lot of countries. However, this practice is not without controversy and recent studies point at the negative effects of grade retention, especially in the long-term. The majority of these studies focused on grade retention in primary education. In our study, we focused on the effect of grade retention in Grade 8 on language achievement and academic self-concept. We matched students who were and were not retained based on their propensity to be retained and compared both groups using a growth curve analysis. The basic treatment “grade retention vs. promotion” was extended with the certificate these students received at the end of Grade 8. With this growth curve analysis, we were able to draw conclusions on the effect in the short-term, as well as in the long-term. In the short-term (i.e. the year of retention), it seems that grade retention had no negative effect on language achievement in the short-term, and even a positive effect on academic self-concept in the year of retention. The effects became more negative when we considered effects in the long-term. Especially for language achievement, we found a strong decline in the achievement of grade retainees. We found no negative effect of grade retention on academic self-concept. We can conclude that grade retention has a negative effect on the achievement of retained students in the long run, but has no negative effect on academic self-concept. When we take into account the certificate they received, it seems that following the teacher’s advice to change track is a better decision than repeating the grade in the same track.     

Constellations of risk factors as moderators of the impact of a randomized intervention on students’ reading skills in rural India

Individual, family and community risk factors might determine the success or failure of educational interventions. The study is a secondary analysis, aimed at identifying distinctive constellations of risk for educational attainment, and at exploring whether membership to these constellations moderated the impact of a cluster-randomized reading intervention in rural India. By means of latent profile analysis, four constellations of risk were identified based on individual and family risk-factors. Multilevel cumulative logit models confirmed that the intervention had a positive impact on the outcome, and revealed that profile membership did not moderate the effect of the intervention. However more nuanced analysis showed that the intervention worked differently for children with different risk-profiles depending on contextual factors.     

Self-regulated learning and students’ perceptions of innovative and traditional learning environments: a longitudinal study in secondary education

This study investigated the relationship between the development of students’ self-regulated learning and students’ perceptions of the learning environment in terms of autonomy support, the emphasis on relevance and collaborative learning. In addition, we compared innovative learning environments that aim to enhance self-regulated learning with traditional learning environments. Questionnaires for measuring self-regulated learning and perceptions of the learning environment were administered by 648 students. Self-regulated learning was measured at the start of secondary education and again half way through the first year. The results point to the importance of how students perceive the learning environment for self-regulated learning. There was a positive relationship between autonomy support and relevance and self-regulated learning. Furthermore, students in innovative environments perceived more autonomy support, more emphasis on relevance and more collaborative learning than those in traditional environments. Students in innovative environments, however, reported no more self-regulated learning than students in traditional environments.     

‘Whatever she may study,she can’t escape from washing dishes’: gender inequity in secondary education – evidence from a longitudinal study in India

Using unique panel data from Young Lives study conducted in undivided Andhra Pradesh, India, this mixed-method paper analyses gender differentials in completion of secondary education. Results show biased secondary school completion rates in favor of boys. Probit regression results highlight certain variables such as mothers’ education, wealth, high self-efficacy, early reading skills, lower birth order, and not engaging in more than two hours of domestic work and paid work at age 12, as positively associated with educational outcomes for girls. Decomposition analysis highlights that engaging in domestic chores at age 12 is the most contributory factor (36%) for the persisting gender gap. The other unexplained contributory factors may well be existing discriminatory social norms and son preference, which is captured by the qualitative case studies. The findings suggest that unless we are able to address persisting gender norms, universalizing secondary education with gender equity, will remain a distant dream.     

Designing Science Learning in the First Years of Schooling. An intervention study with sequenced learning material on the topic of ‘floating and sinking'

Research on learning and instruction of science has shown that learning environments applied in preschool and primary school rarely makes use of structured learning materials in problem-based environments although these are decisive quality features for promoting conceptual change and scientific reasoning within early science learning. We thus developed and implemented a science learning environment for children in the first years of schooling which contains structured learning materials with the goal of supporting conceptual change concerning the understanding of the floating and sinking of objects and fostering students' scientific reasoning skills. In the present implementation study, we aim to provide a best-practice example of early science learning. The study was conducted with a sample of 15 classes of the first years of schooling and a total of 244 children. Tests were constructed to measure children's conceptual understanding before and after the implementation. Our results reveal a decrease in children's misconceptions from pretest to posttest. After the curriculum, the children were able to produce significantly more correct predictions about the sinking or floating of objects than before the curriculum and also relative to a control group. Moreover, due to the intervention, the explanations given for their predictions implied a more elaborated concept of material kinds. All in all, a well-structured curriculum promoting comparison and scientific reasoning by means of inquiry learning was shown to support children's conceptual change.     

The effect of age‐position and sex on academic performance: a study of secondary schools in Cyprus

The present study examined one aspect of the ‘season of birth’ phenomenon, the variations in educational achievement effected by a child's age‐position within the class. Sex differences in achievement were also examined. An analysis based on a sample of nearly 4,000 high school examination results was conducted. The research analysed the Greek language grade, mathematics grade and the overall ‘high school’ grade, obtained by 17+ year old students who graduated at the end of the 1992/93 and 1993/94 academic years. The presence of an age‐position related effect was found, but in contrast to similar research studies the youngest students, in most instances, outperformed the oldest students. Nevertheless, this finding is consistent with research studies related to the age‐position effect when framed within the context of the Cypriot educational policy of promotion by examination. It was found that the youngest‐born pupils in a year group made up the highest percentage of repeating, i.e. non‐promoted students. However, the findings do suggest a need for a re‐evaluation of the nature of the age‐position effect. It was also found that, in general, female students attained significantly higher grades than their male counterparts.     

Contributions of morphological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) to Chinese children’s reading comprehension versus reading fluency: evidence from a longitudinal mediation model

Some cognitive processes may be shared between reading comprehension and reading fluency, while others may be independent. In this longitudinal study, 127 Chinese children in grades 1–2 were tested three times (T1–T3) to explore the contributions of early morphological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) to subsequent reading comprehension and reading fluency. The results demonstrated that both T1 morphological awareness and RAN directly and significantly explained a similar amount of variance in T3 reading comprehension and reading fluency. T1 Morphological awareness predicted T3 reading comprehension via T2 word-reading accuracy but not word-reading fluency, whereas the indirect influence of T1 RAN on T3 reading comprehension was not significant. In contrast, morphological awareness predicted reading fluency via word-reading accuracy and fluency, while RAN predicted it only via word-reading fluency not accuracy. The findings add to the growing literature by providing evidence of the similarities and differences in the cognitive underpinnings of reading comprehension versus reading fluency in Chinese children.

     

“Commenting on your work is a waste of time only!”: An appraisal-based study of evaluative language in supervisory feedback

Research on supervisory feedback on master’s theses, especially attitudinal stances conveyed in such feedback, is thin on the ground. Students’ construal of their supervisors’ attitudes, however, can have a profound impact on their engagement with supervisory feedback. Drawing on the appraisal framework, which characterizes attitudinal meanings in terms of affect (i.e., emotional responses), judgement (i.e., normative evaluation of human behaviors) and appreciation (i.e., aesthetically-/socially-based evaluation of objects and products), this study examined Nepalese supervisors’ attitudinal stances communicated in written comments on master’s thesis drafts (n = 76) submitted by English-as-a-foreign-language students and oral feedback on proposal and thesis defences (n = 89). Quantitative analyses revealed that while instances of appreciation dominated in the supervisors’ use of evaluative language, judgements were also frequent, with affective responses trailing far behind. In both the oral feedback and written comments, significant disciplinary variations were observed for certain types of judgment and appreciation. These findings are discussed in terms of disciplinary culture and the potential impact of the attitudinal stances on students’ learning. Implications are derived for the productive framing of supervisory feedback to facilitate students’ feedback uptake.     

Students’ perceptions of the flipped classroom model in an engineering course: a case study

The flipped classroom model is an innovative educational trend that has been widely adopted in the social sciences but not engineering education. In this model, an active instructional approach shifts the educational strategy from a teacher- to a student-centred approach. The purpose of this study is to compare the learning outcomes of engineering students attending a flipped-model section of the Dynamics of Structures course with students attending a traditional, lecture-based section of the same course taught by the same instructor. The results confirm previous research showing that test scores in the flipped course sections were slightly higher than traditional sections. Although the improvement in test scores was statistically insignificant, student statements indicated that the flipped model promoted a deeper, broader perspective on learning, facilitated problem-solving strategies and improved critical-thinking abilities, self-confidence and teamwork skills, which are needed for a successful engineering career.     

Making the written word “speak”: Reflections on the teaching of correspondence courses

Abstract

Learning outcomes for an interactive television‐based distance learning course in introductory high school Japanese were evaluated in three successive years by comparing student achievement in the distance learning course to that in traditional classes. Year‐end achievement tests of listening and written language competency were administered to students in both the distance and face‐to‐face courses. Results in the first two years showed that test scores of students in the distance learning course were higher than those of students in the face‐to‐face classes; however, possible group differences in motivation, general ability, and experience as language learners could not be ruled out as explanations for the difference. Therefore, achievement measures were supplemented in the third year with data on students’ perceived efficacy as Japanese language users, their grades, and their previous foreign language learning experience. The achievement data again showed differences favoring the distance learning group; trends were consistent for students with differing levels of school success and amount of prior language learning experience. Factors that could account for these results are hypothesized and suggestions for future research are proposed.     

Research on the“Equivalent Effect”of Subtitling Translation in Garfield Ⅱ

As a large number of foreign films have flooded into the Chinese film market, subtitling translation plays an important role in helping the audience understand and learn about some information and cultures from different countries. This paper mainly uses Peter Newmark’s"equivalent effect"as a theoretical foundation to analyze the features of two kitties’(Garfield and Prince) source language (English) and target language (Chinese) in the film Garfield Ⅱ based on their living surroundings and social status.     

Beyond “what works”: A mixed-methods study of intervention effect modifiers in the Good Behavior Game

This mixed-methods study examines two moderators of the impact of the Good Behavior Game—implementation variability, participant risk status, and the interaction between them—as predictors of behavioral and academic outcomes. Quantitative data from 38 primary schools were utilized, with outcome data collected at baseline and 2-year follow-up. Behavior (disruptive behavior, prosocial behavior, and concentration problems) was assessed via the Teacher Observation of Classroom Adaptation Checklist. Reading attainment was assessed via national teacher assessment scores, and the Hodder Group Reading Test. Implementation fidelity/quality data were collected via independent observations. Participant risk status was modeled using a cumulative risk index. Multilevel modeling revealed that higher levels of fidelity/quality were associated with improved overall reading scores (d = 0.203–225), but worsening disruptive behavior among high-risk students (d = 0.560). Thematic analysis of qualitative interview data collected from 20 teachers identified six groups of at-risk students who were perceived to experience differential effects, and five key mechanisms underpinning these.     

Does being assigned to a low school track negatively affect psychological adjustment? A longitudinal study in the first year of secondary school

Previous research suggests that the 1st year in secondary school for some students goes hand in hand with an increase in adjustment difficulties. One factor that might influence this process on an individual, compositional, and institutional level is the academic track a student attends. It was hypothesized that being assigned to a low-qualifying track predicts a stronger increase in adjustment problems than being assigned to higher tracks. A sample of 734 seventh-grade students from Switzerland attending 1 of 3 regular academic tracks or special educational classes participated. Pupils reported anonymously on their antisocial behavior, anger control problems, self-worth, and emotional distress. Multilevel analyses were performed, predicting end of seventh-grade adjustment by track controlling for initial adjustment and background variables. Students enrolled in the low-qualifying regular track increased significantly more than students from other tracks regarding their problems with global adjustment, antisocial behavior, and emotional distress.