Emergent storybook reading revisited (Research Note)

Fifteen children from working-class homes attending two kindergarten classes in one school in a small town in Canada were asked to select their favourite book in October and June to read to a researcher. The storybook re-enactments were tape recorded and transcribed, and then coded according to a developmental scheme developed by Sulzby (1985) and Barnhart (1991). The results were compared with the results of Sulzby’s (1985) study with 24 children from middle-class homes. The mean score of the children in the Sulzby study was found to be significantly higher in October than the mean score of the children in the present study. Furthermore, the difference between the mean scores of the two groups had increased significantly by June. Further analysis revealed that the children in the present study did not show the same developmental progression as the children in the Sulzby study and, in fact, 11 of the 15 children did not progress at all along the developmental continuum. The results are discussed in relation to concepts of emergent literacy and socio-economic factors in early reading development.     

‘Perceived’ competition and performance in Italian secondary schools: New evidence from OECD—PISA 2006

In this paper, we investigate the effects of competition on the performance of Italian secondary schools as measured by maths achievement scores (PISA 2006 dataset). Competition is measured by an indicator of ‘perceived’ competition (generated from an answer provided by the schools’ principals). The methodology employed is a propensity score matching that is corrected to take into account heteroskedasticity and finite sample bias. The results show a positive effect of competition on school performance. Nevertheless, this effect is quite low (between 3.62% and 4.05% computed at the average score level) and is consistent with previous findings about educational systems in Italy and worldwide. This is relevant for policy‐making because competition appears to impact school performance even in a country like Italy where specific pro‐competitive policies are quite absent.     

The Catch Up Project: a reading intervention in Year 3 for Level 1 readers (Research Note)

The Catch Up Programme is a literacy intervention designed for children who are behind with reading at the start of Year 3 (7 to 8 year‐olds). This paper describes pilot research that informed the project in its early stages of development, and the findings should therefore be treated with caution. The reading progress of a sample of 74 Catch Up pupils from 15 schools in three local education authorities was measured. This showed a considerable increase in pupils’ reading ages across a 10 week period. A smaller experimental study was also carried out in nine Oxfordshire schools (48 pupils) to compare a Catch Up sub‐sample with a Matched Time group and a Control group. Findings showed that the Catch Up pupils made considerably more progress during the same period than both the other groups.     

Lexical-semantic reading in a shallow orthography: evidence from a girl with Williams Syndrome

The reading skills of a girl with Williams Syndrome are assessed by a timed word-naming task. To test the efficiency of lexical and nonlexical reading, we considered four marker effects: Lexicality (better reading of words than nonwords), frequency (better reading of high than low frequency words), length (better reading of short than long words), and contextuality (better reading of words with one-to-one grapheme-to-phoneme mapping than words with context-sensitive graphemes). Results suggested that this girl has failed to develop efficient orthography-to-phonology mappings and is dependent upon a lexical-semantic reading procedure in which a word’s pronunciation is activated after its meaning is obtained.     

Typography in children’s reading schemes may be suboptimal: Evidence from measures of reading rate

We investigated whether the layout of type in two popular children’s reading schemes was suitable for the intended reading age. 120 children read four passages of text that adopted the typography of four reading stages in each of the two schemes. The size and spacing of the texts decreased with successive stages as the intended reading age increased. The reading speed of children aged 5 to 7 years decreased as the text size decreased: in particular, these children read fastest the text designed for 5 and 6 year olds. Older children aged 8 to 11 years were neither assisted nor disadvantaged by text size. Children of all ages, particularly those susceptible to visual stress, were found to make more errors on the smaller than on the larger text. We conclude that the reading development of some children might benefit from a larger text size and spacing than is currently the norm, and that no children would be disadvantaged by such a change.     

More evidence that less is better: Sub-optimal choice in dogs

The less-is-better effect is a preference for the lesser of two alternatives sometimes observed when they are evaluated separately. For example, a dinner service of 24 intact pieces might be judged to be more valuable than a 40-piece dinner service containing nine broken pieces. Pattison and Zentall (Animal Cognition, 17: 1019-1022, 2014) reported similar sub-optimal choice behavior in dogs using a simultaneous choice procedure. Given a choice between a single high-value food item (cheese) or an equivalent high-value item plus a lower-value food item (carrot), their dogs chose the individual item. In a subsequent test, the dogs preferred two high-value items to a single high-value item, suggesting that avoidance of multiple items did not cause the sub-optimal choice behavior. In two experiments, we replicated Pattison and Zentall’s procedure while including additional controls. In Experiment 1, habituation of neophobia for multiple items was controlled for by intermixing the two types of test trial within a single experimental session. In Experiment 2, we controlled for avoidance of heterogeneous rewards by including test trials in which a choice was offered between the combination of items and a single low-value item. In both experiments we observed sub-optimal choice behavior which could not be explained by either of these putative mechanisms. Our results, as well as those of Pattison and Zentall, are consistent with the suggestion that dogs’ assessment of the total value of multiple items is based, at least partly, on their average quality.     

Visions for literacy: parents’ aspirations for reading in children with Down syndrome

Although children with Down syndrome (DS) can learn to read, few studies have explored parental perspectives on the reading development of this group of children. This article, written by Leila Ricci and Anna Osipova, from California State University, explores visions and expectations regarding reading held by parents of children with Down syndrome in the US. Parents of 50 children with DS (aged three to 13 years) completed a survey about their children's interest in reading and responded to open‐ended questions inquiring about their views on their children's reading development. A majority of parents in this study described their children's positive attitude toward reading, stated their reading‐related goals for their children, defined their children's relative strengths in reading, and shared strategies used in the home to promote literacy in this population. Parents pay close attention to and have high expectations for their children's reading achievement, and thereby would benefit from partnerships with informed educators willing and capable of teaching reading to children with DS.     

Challenges for schools in communities with internal migration flows: evidence from Turkey

Turkey is a country that has experienced and continues to experience a dramatic degree of both rural-to-urban and inter-regional internal migration. Migrants tend to settle in gecekondu areas in either established inner-city neighborhoods or in newer squatter settlements built on undeveloped land bordering rural areas on the urban periphery. Schools in these areas are invariably impacted by this extensive and unplanned internal migration. This study aimed to examine the challenges facing schools located in migrant communities in Turkey. The findings show that such schools are likely to be resource-poor, overcrowded urban facilities that face challenges related to poor school quality, low academic achievement of students, intercultural issues related to the diverse student population and a lack of parental awareness regarding education and child development. Students were also reported to suffer from malnutrition and a lack of adequate physiological and emotional support. Furthermore, teachers attributed the physiological, psycho-social and academic shortcomings of children mainly to their poor language skills, the low socio-economic status of families and household poverty.     

Prosody in skilled silent reading: evidence from eye movements

Recent eye movement experiments offer preliminary evidence that skilled readers activate word‐level prosodic information when silently reading sentences. This paper reviews the role of eye movements during reading as well as the preliminary evidence for prosodic processing. A new experiment examines whether prosodic processing differs for high and low frequency words. Readers' eye movements were monitored while reading target words presented in sentences preceded by parafoveal previews that either contained the exact initial syllable of the target (i.e. the congruent preview condition) or the initial syllable plus the next letter (i.e. the incongruent preview condition). Reading times on high frequency words did not differ in the congruent and incongruent preview conditions, but reading times on low frequency words were faster in the congruent condition. The implications of the present result and previous studies are discussed in terms of phonological hub theory, which is a production‐based theory of word recognition during skilled silent reading.     

Evaluation of a computer‐based reading intervention in infant and junior schools

Recent studies (Fawcett et al, 1999; Nicolson et al, 1999) have demonstrated that 6 and 8 year old children found to be at risk of reading failure can be provided with very cost‐effective support using traditional teaching methods. Nonetheless, a significant minority of children failed to make sufficient progress. The present studies undertook a replication of these studies, using the RITA computer‐based literacy support system. The RITA system assists, rather than replaces, the teacher in providing support tailored to each child’s profile of reading attainments. The results indicated that the RITA support was both educationally effective and economically effective, with comparable cost effectiveness to the traditional approach when used with infant school children (6 year olds), and somewhat greater cost effectiveness when used with junior school children (8 year olds). All groups of children reacted very positively to the RITA lessons. It is suggested that computer‐assisted reading support can be effective in supporting children at risk of reading failure, even at junior school level.     

A Dutch comprehension test for identifying reading problems in L1 and L2 students (Research Note)

The Dutch Text Comprehension Test was developed in order to help improve the education of minority students in the Netherlands. As it appeared that many second language (L2) readers have more difficulties with respect to the micro-processing of words and sentences while compensating on the macro level, there was a need for an instrument with diagnostic value so as to yield clues for further remedial teaching. The test proved reliable for both L1 students and L2 students. The test, with regard to diagnosing the type of reading problem, was validated by carrying out further observations by video. Although the classification results were not optimal, the test can be used for diagnostic purposes provided that there is a relatively large difference between sub-test scores on the micro and the macro levels. The results of a screening survey show that there are great differences in percentages of weak readers and distribution of reader types among the different secondary school types in the Netherlands. Unlike weak readers who attend the higher school types, weak readers at the lower educational school types – among them many L2 readers – are ‘problem readers’ who do not compensate for their lack of word knowledge and sentence processing and who do not appear to be efficient ‘bottom-up readers.’ Secondary schools are therefore encouraged to screen their first year students in order to gain insight into the problems that weaker readers – including L2 readers – may have, and to develop remedial teaching programmes tailored to the different needs of L1 and L2 students.     

The role of orthographic analogies in reading for meaning: evidence from readers with dyslexia

The aim of this experiment was to investigate the use of orthographic analogies in conditions that involved making sense of print (picture‐word matching) and pronouncing print (reading aloud) for readers with dyslexia. An adapted version of the classic clue‐word paradigm developed by Goswami was used. Participants were 40 readers with dyslexia and 40 reading‐age‐matched comparison readers. Based on previous theory and research in this area, we predicted that readers with dyslexia would read significantly fewer analogous words than their reading‐age‐matched counterparts. In light of the supposition that word‐picture matching does not require the synthesised pronunciation of a word, we also predicted that readers with dyslexia might be less impaired at analogy use in the picture‐word matching than in the reading aloud condition. However, we found that the dyslexic group read significantly fewer analogous words at post‐test than their reading‐age‐matched peers in both conditions. Also, performance in overall word reading was better for both groups in the word‐picture matching condition. The implications of these results for theory and practice in reading development are discussed, and methodological limitations are noted.     

‘No Outsiders’: Moving beyond a discourse of tolerance to challenge heteronormativity in primary schools

In this paper we describe a UK‐based participatory action research project that looks beyond the discourse of tolerance to investigate and challenge heteronormative processes in primary schools through reflective action research. This 28‐month ESRC‐funded project supports 15 primary teachers working in schools in three regions of the UK to develop action research projects that address lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality in their own schools and classrooms. In this paper we will examine how the original principles on which the project design was based have manifested themselves throughout the course of the project, drawing upon examples of classroom practice and reflective discussions among project team members. We will explore how designing intentionally for collective participation has produced spaces for people to do and think in ways that have not only gone beyond what we imagined but have also challenged and sometimes contradicted our own ways of thinking.     

The influence of decodability in early reading text on reading achievement: a review of the evidence

The purpose of this review is to synthesize the existing research on decodability as a text characteristic examining how reading decodable text impacts students?? reading performance and growth. The results are organized into two sections based on the research designs of the studies: (1) studies that described student performance when reading texts of varying decodability levels, and (2) studies that compared the reading performance of students after participation in a treatment that manipulated decodable text as an independent variable. Collectively the results indicate that decodability is a critical characteristic of early reading text as it increases the likelihood that students will use a decoding strategy and results in immediate benefits, particularly with regard to accuracy. The studies point to the need for multiple-criteria text with decodability being one key characteristic in ensuring that students develop the alphabetic principle that is necessary for successful reading, rather than text developed based on the single criterion of decodability.     

Morphological awareness and reading in second and fifth grade: evidence from Hebrew

Research suggests that morphological awareness facilitates word decoding, improves lexical knowledge, and helps reading comprehension (Carlisle, 2010; Nagy et al., 2014; Verhoeven & Perfetti, 2011). The present study examined the relationship among morphological awareness, word recognition and reading comprehension in 153 second- and fifth-grade Hebrew speakers at an elementary school in Israel. Students were given morphological awareness tests and tests for word recognition and reading comprehension. Three types of morphological awareness were analyzed: inflection, derivation and construct formation. Overall, students with low morphological awareness in derivation and construct formation showed relatively poor achievement in word recognition and comprehension. All three types were found to correlate with reading comprehension in readers with high morphological awareness. These readers also exhibited good reading skills. The results are discussed with regard to the special characteristics of Hebrew morphology and reading process, which aid morphological decomposition.