A longitudinal study of engineering students’ approaches to their studies

This longitudinal study draws on data from a larger project and examines how students’ perceptions of their opportunities to influence their study environment may be enacted in approaches aimed at influencing their studies, and whether this changes during the course of their studies. Ten students from a 4.5‐year Master’s programme in Engineering were studied throughout their education by means of semi‐structured in‐depth interviews, which were analysed thematically. The results indicate that students’ perceptions of their study environment were enacted in three approaches aimed at influencing their study environment: (i) to adapt to the environment and to study alone; (ii) to try to change the programme, to create an individual curriculum and to interact with teachers; and (iii) to cooperate with their peers. The thematic analysis suggests that students’ perceptions of their study environment were enacted in the different approaches and that these changed along with external demands in the programme.     

Multiple dimensions of adolescents’ reading attitudes and their relationship with reading comprehension

Reading and Writing - Despite a growing research base that explores motivational constructs in reading and their relationship to achievement, nuanced questions remain. The present study examines...     

The relationship between young children’s enjoyment of learning to read,reading attitudes,confidence and attainment

Background: While there is a considerable body of research exploring the relationship between older primary school children’s reading attitudes, confidence and attainment, there is a noticeable lack of research with younger children. Furthermore, there is relatively little research exploring the extent to which children’s reading attitudes, confidence and attainment are related to their enjoyment of learning to read.

Purpose: To understand the relationship between young children’s reading attitudes, reading confidence, enjoyment of learning to read and reading attainment.

Sample: Two hundred and three children (103 boys) with an average age of 6 years and 9 months (.32 years standard deviation) participated in this study. Children were from 11 primary schools in England, located within a wide range of socio-economic neighbourhoods.

Design and methods: All children completed questionnaires examining their attitudes to reading, reading confidence (using Progress in International Reading Literacy Study items) and enjoyment of learning to read. Children also completed an assessment of word reading. All assessments were administered individually.

Results: Children’s attitudes to reading, reading confidence and enjoyment of learning to read correlated with their word reading skill; however, only reading attitudes and reading confidence predicted variance in reading success. With regard to gender differences, girls reported more positive reading attitudes than boys, even after controlling for differences in reading skill.

Conclusions: Results highlight that the relationship between children’s reading skills and the affective aspects of learning to read develops from a young age. Therefore, methods of reading instruction need to foster affective aspects of reading, in addition to developing cognitive skills to best support young children’s reading development.     

Exploring the relationship between process and outcome in young children’s learning: stage one of a longitudinal study

The first phase of a small-scale, longitudinal study which is part of the Effective Early Learning (EEL) Project, a UK based, national, early childhood evaluation and improvement initiative is described. A key developmental proposition is that children who operate in a rich and stimulating learning environment and experience high levels of involvement and engagement in their learning will achieve enhanced learning outcomes. The EEL Project aims to investigate the validity of this proposition. In particular, it explores the relationship between one of the key process measures in the EEL Project, the Child Involvement Scale (CIS), and the outcome measures being used by early childhood settings to monitor academic progress in the UK, namely Baseline Assessment in English and Mathematics (BAEM) at 4 years of age, and Standard Assessment Tasks (SAT) at 7 years of age.     

Do teachers’ perceptions of children’s math and reading related ability and effort predict children’s self-concept of ability in math and reading?

This study investigated to what extent primary school teachers’ perceptions of their students’ ability and effort predict developmental changes in children’s self-concepts of ability in math and reading after controlling for students’ academic performance and general intelligence. Three cohorts (N?=?849) of elementary school children and their teachers were followed for four years. Children’s self-concepts and performance ability in math and reading were measured annually during Waves 2–4. Teachers rated the children’s ability and effort at each of the four waves. Domain-specific differences and developmental changes could be identified in the associations between teachers’ perceptions and children’s ability self-concepts. Teachers’ ability perceptions predicted children’s concurrent and subsequent ability self-concepts in math and reading, whereas teachers’ effort perceptions predicted children’s math ability self-concept only at Wave 4. Analyses with multi-sample procedure showed that these models were similar for boys and girls and for children in different cohort groups.     

Pedagogical devices as children’s social care levers: A study of social care workers’ attitudes towards boarding schools to care for and educate children in need

It has been proposed that boarding schools in England can be used to provide a stable education and care environment for vulnerable children in need, and the government is expanding their use. However, for vulnerable children to be placed in boarding schools, social workers will need to be willing to contemplate boarding as a viable care option. In this study we interviewed N = 21 social care practitioners including directors, senior and middle managers, frontline social workers, social worker-academics and family support workers who work with vulnerable children. Using thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews, seven major themes identified a range of issues and concerns held by social care workers about placing vulnerable children in boarding schools. We present these themes and consider the issues that will have to be addressed prior to changes in policy and practice. The study concludes that many of those within the social work profession are unlikely to consider boarding as an intervention for children in need. Further research in this area is a matter of urgency.     

A longitudinal analysis of the alignment between children’s early word-level reading trajectories,teachers’ reported concerns and supports provided

Reading and Writing - In this longitudinal study, the word-level reading trajectories of 118 children were tracked alongside teachers’ reported concerns and types of support provided through...     

Synergetic effects of phonological awareness,vocabulary, and word reading on bilingual children’s reading comprehension: A three-year study

Using comparable measures of first language (L1) Chinese and second language (L2) English, this three-year longitudinal study examined the synergetic effects of phonological awareness, vocabulary, and word reading on reading comprehension development among 227 Hong Kong Chinese-English bilinguals from Grades 2-4. Structural equation growth modeling revealed that all three factors were significantly linked to one another and to initial reading comprehension for each language. Across languages, L1 Chinese vocabulary was directly linked to initial L2 English reading comprehension, while L1 Chinese phonological awareness was indirectly linked to initial L2 English reading comprehension via L2 English vocabulary and word reading. These findings underscore the synergetic effects of early phonological and lexical skills in determining early reading comprehension ability in both L1 and L2.     

Cultural Mediation of Children’s Cosmologies: A longitudinal study of the astronomy concepts of Chinese and New Zealand children

These longitudinal studies investigated the cultural mediation of children’s thinking about the Earth using an interview technique designed to elicit responses from children from all “levels” of their conceptual organization (intuitive, cultural, and scientific). Close scrutiny of the research literature in this field reveals that some strategies used in the past to probe children’s ideas have been influenced by the background of the interviewer, either in the design of their questions or in the use made of concrete props (e.g., of the Earth’s shape). This has tended to obscure the degree of cultural influence in those interviewed. Central to the current research was the development of an interview method (“instrument attunement”) that was flexible, culturally adaptable, and could be tuned to the response level of the child. The participants included 129 boys and 113 girls from China, and 217 boys and 227 girls from New Zealand. The methodology utilizing observational astronomy led into discussion of the motion and shape of the Earth, Sun and Moon. Surprisingly, the development of children’s concepts was found to be remarkably similar within the three main ethnic groups (Han, New Zealand European and New Zealand Maori) in the two cultures (China and New Zealand). Cases of cultural mediation were detected using the new methodology but these could be assimilated into a common taxonomy of cosmological concepts for all participants.     

Parents’ reading-related knowledge and children’s reading acquisition

Teacher reading-related knowledge (phonological awareness and phonics knowledge) predicts student reading, however little is known about the reading-related knowledge of parents. Participants comprised 70 dyads (children from kindergarten and grade 1 and their parents). Parents were administered a questionnaire tapping into reading-related knowledge, print exposure, storybook reading, and general cultural knowledge. Children were tested on measures of letter-word knowledge, sound awareness, receptive vocabulary, oral expression, and mathematical skill. Parent reading-related knowledge showed significant positive links with child letter-word knowledge and sound awareness, but showed no correlations with child measures of mathematical skill or vocabulary. Furthermore, parent reading-related knowledge was not associated with parents' own print exposure or cultural knowledge, indicating that knowledge about English word structure may be separate from other cognitive skills. Implications are discussed in terms of improving parent reading-related knowledge to promote child literacy.     

Prosodic awareness and children’s multisyllabic word reading

Prosodic awareness (the rhythmic patterning of speech) accounts for unique variance in reading development. However, studies have thus far focused on early readers and utilised literacy measures which fail to distinguish between monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. The current study investigated the factors that are specifically associated with multisyllabic word reading in a sample of 50 children aged between 7 and 8 years. Prosodic awareness was the strongest predictor of multisyllabic word reading accuracy, after controlling for phoneme awareness, morphological awareness, vocabulary and short-term memory. Children also made surprisingly few phonemic errors while, in contrast, errors of stress assignment were commonplace. Prosodic awareness was also the strongest predictor of stress placement errors, although this finding was not significant. Prosodic skills may play an increasingly important role in literacy performance as children encounter more complex reading materials. Once phoneme-level skills are mastered, prosodic awareness is arguably the strongest predictor of single word reading.     

The relationship between the level of bullying in primary schools and children’s views of their teachers’ attitudes to pupil behaviour

It is known that the incidence of bullying reported by primary school children varies greatly between schools. It has also been shown that schools in which staff express a greater level of concern with managing the problem generally experience lower levels of bullying. This study examines the children’s, rather than the teachers’, views about the level of care and attention which the teachers pay to issues relating to behaviour and the social organisation of their school. It is shown that the children’s views are a good indicator of the frequency of bullying that will be found in that school.     

Parents’ spontaneous evaluations of children and symbolic harmful behaviors toward their child

Parents’ evaluations of children are believed to be a cognitive contributor to their subsequent child-directed harsh or physically abusive behaviors. The current research examined whether parents’ (N = 100) evaluations of children were moderated by either (a) the child behavior on which the evaluation was based and (b) parents’ measured risk for child physical abuse. The study also explored whether parents’ evaluations of children were related to their tendencies to symbolically harm their child. The current study also used a novel method to indirectly assess parents’ evaluations of children: A modified Affect Misattribution Procedure. Contrary to a priori expectations, negative evaluations of children were stronger for parents who were at low risk, relative to high risk, for child physical abuse. Nonetheless, we observed that high-risk parents were more likely than low-risk parents to inflict symbolic harm onto their child. In an exploratory analysis we observed that parents who formed more overall negative evaluations of children engaged in more symbolic harm to their child. Although high-risk parents were more likely to symbolically harm their child than low-risk parents, this effect does not seem to be due to high-risk parents’ negative child evaluations from negative child behaviors.     

Parents’ assessments of their children’s abilities

Conducted in the framework of the theory of social representations, the study was designed to examine the dimensions in terms of which parents assess their children’s abilities, the ways in which social positions — here, the parents’ education and gender and the child’s gender — organize these assessments, and the ways in which the assessments relate to the estimated school success of the child. The subjects were a nationwide sample of parents (N=938), who were asked to estimate their children’s school success and to assess these children’s abilities. A factor analysis showed the ability assessments to be multidimensional. The parents assessed girls’ cognitive and social abilities to be better than boys’. Academically educated parents drew a more categorical distinction than other parents between cognitive and other abilities, which suggests that they endorse a differential conception of intelligence. A clear congruity of content was observed between the estimations of school success and the assessments of abilities, indicating that different school subjects are associated with different abilities.     

A review of key issues in the measurement of children’s social and emotional skills

Recent policy developments (such as the Children’s Plan) and the introduction of a new national strategy (the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning programme) have re‐emphasised the importance of social and emotional skills in educational contexts. As such, educational psychologists are increasingly likely to be involved in the measurement of social and emotional skills, either as part of their case‐work or through research. They may also be asked to provide advice to schools looking to evaluate certain aspects of their practice in this area. The aim of this paper is to provide a discussion of key issues in the measurement of social and emotional skills in children and adolescents. These include: difficulties with the underlying theory and frameworks for social and emotional skills, inconsistent terminology, the scope and distinctiveness of available measures, psychometric properties, and more practical issues such as the type of respondent, location and purpose of measurement. The paper concludes with a call for more research and the further development of appropriate measures.     

Prosodic and phonemic awareness in children’s reading of long and short words

Phonemic and prosodic awareness are both phonological processes that operate at different levels: the former at the level of the individual sound segment and the latter at the suprasegmental level across syllables. Both have been shown to be related to word reading in young readers. In this study we examine how these processes are differentially related to reading monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. Participants were 110 children in grades four and five who were asked to read monosyllabic and three- and four-syllable words matched for frequency. Phonemic awareness was assessed via a phoneme elision task; prosodic awareness was assessed by a task asking participants to identify the syllable bearing primary stress in a spoken word. Results showed that phonemic and prosodic awareness were independent predictors of short word reading, and both phonological factors made independent contributions to multisyllabic word reading, showing that phonemic and prosodic awareness are complementary but not redundant processes. Only prosodic awareness survived control for simple decoding ability in the reading of long words, suggesting that suprasegmental phonology gives added value to our understanding of reading multisyllabic words.     

Understanding prosody and morphology in school-age children’s reading

Reading and Writing - We examined the unique contributions of prosodic awareness and morphological awareness to school-aged children’s word reading and reading comprehension. A total of 110...     

Early reading success and its relationship to reading achievement and reading volume: replication of ‘10 years later’

Cunningham and Stanovich reported a longitudinal investigation over 10 years that examined the unique influence of exposure to print in explaining individual differences on various measures of reading achievement and declarative (general) knowledge. The present study replicated their investigation with a larger number of participants and additional measures of literacy and language skills. Fifty-four 1st graders were administered reading, spelling, vocabulary, IQ, and listening comprehension measures and then followed to the end of 10th grade. At the end of 10th grade, they were administered an IQ test and measures of reading comprehension, language ability, general knowledge, and exposure to print. Results showed that 1st grade reading skills were a strong predictor of 10th grade outcomes. Second and third-grade reading skills were predictive of individual differences in print exposure even after 10th grade reading comprehension and language ability had been partialed. Individual differences in print exposure also predicted differences in the growth of reading ability, word decoding, spelling, vocabulary, and listening comprehension throughout the elementary grades. Findings confirm the powerful, long-term benefits of providing children with a fast start in reading and support the reciprocal nature of strong reading skills and engagement in reading and reading-related activities.     

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.