Measuring adult literacy students’ reading skills using the Gray Oral Reading Test

There are not enough reading tests standardized on adults who have very low literacy skills, and therefore tests standardized on children are frequently administered. This study addressed the complexities and problems of using a test normed on children to measure the reading comprehension skills of 193 adults who read at approximately third through fifth grade reading grade equivalency levels. Findings are reported from an analysis of the administration of Form A of the Gray Oral Reading Tests—Fourth Edition (Wiederholt & Bryant, 2001a, b). Results indicated that educators and researchers should be very cautious when interpreting test results of adults who have difficulty reading when children’s norm-referenced tests are administered.     

Variability and stability in parent–child discourse during and following repeated shared book reading

Reading and Writing - Research on parent–child shared book reading (SBR) has focused primarily on a single reading of a book and on the reading of the text itself. Yet parents often...     

“Literacy Lift-Off”: an experimental evaluation of a reading recovery programme on literacy skills and reading self-concept

Worldwide, considerable emphasis is currently being placed on the provision of appropriate classroom-based preventative interventions and in-class literacy support, in preference to withdrawal methods of educational support. Many schools in Ireland are currently implementing Literacy Lift-Off in their classrooms. Literacy Lift-Off is an adaption of the well-known Reading Recovery programme. The current study aims to establish whether Literacy Lift-Off improves students’ literacy skills. It further seeks to determine what impact Literacy Lift-Off has on students’ reading self-concept levels. Ninety-two students aged between five years and six years six months (52 boys, 40 girls) attending four Senior Infant classes were recruited for this study. Two class groups were randomly chosen to act as an intervention cohort (n = 47) and two class groups were randomly chosen to act as a wait-list control cohort (n = 45). This experimental study evaluated the Literacy Lift-Off intervention on students’ letter identification, word attack skills, word reading, and reading self-concept beliefs. Intervention students were compared with control students who did not receive the Literacy Lift-Off intervention at pre-test and post-test levels. Results showed that while both groups showed significant change on all dependent variables from pre-intervention to post-intervention, those in the experimental group showed significantly more improvement on word attack skills, word reading and reading self-concept beliefs. This study showed that a whole-class reading recovery programme can be effective in improving literacy skills and reading self-concept.     

The importance of parental book‐reading; tensions between theory and practice

This article is about book‐reading by nine lower class Curaçaoan mothers and their children. All children visited a kindergarten in Curaçao. Curaçao is an island in the Caribbean.

The kindergarten teachers had started a reading project to stimulate parents to read books to their children. Teachers did not know how parents actually read to their children. We conducted the study to describe parent and child activities during joint story‐book reading. We use this project as a case to clarify some of the tensions between notions based on research findings from studies which were mainly conducted with middle class families and projects for educational change which tend to focus on lower class families. Theory tells us that reading with young children should be interactive. Conversations, in which the child actively engages, linking the story or pictures to the child's own knowledge and experiences, are more important to the child's development than reading the story as such. The Curaçaoan reading project is just one example of many project swhich aim at stimulating parental book‐reading without training the parents how book‐reading best can be done.

In the study we found that the parent‐child dyads talkeda lot during book reading. The conversations of some dyads, however, contained many instances of unsuccessful dialogue, and few moments of construction of meaning beyond the actual text. In addition, mothers strongly structured the dialogue that consisted for a large part of retelling the story. It is doubtful whether this type of book reading is as developmen‐tally enriching for the children as is expected and suggested by the teachers.     

Enhancing parent–child shared book reading interactions: Promoting references to the book's plot and socio-cognitive themes

The study examined the efficacy of an intervention designed to promote parents’ and preschoolers’ references to storybooks’ plot and socio-cognitive themes during shared reading within a sample of 58 families from low-SES background. All parents were given four books, one new book weekly, and were instructed to read each book four times per week to their children. Parents in the control group were given no further guidance, whereas parents in the intervention group were guided in reading the books interactively with their children using Bruner's (1986) structure of the complete storybook reading experience. These parents were taught a four-reading model that guided them to first focus on the book's plot aspects (vocabulary, sequence of events, story structure) and then move on to its socio-cognitive aspects (mental terms, mental causality, references to the child's life). After the intervention, parents and children in the intervention group referred more than their control counterparts to both the book's plot and its socio-cognitive themes. The advantages of the intervention were maintained beyond effects of parental education and of children's gender, vocabulary, and social cognition level. The study revealed the importance of direct guidance of parents and the potential of shared reading contexts for eliciting rich conversations between parents and children. Discussion emphasized the importance of encouraging parents to refer to both the book's plot and its socio-cognitive themes.     

Situating pre‐service reading teachers as tutors: implications of teacher self‐efficacy on tutoring elementary students

This research examined the impact of high teacher efficacy on tutoring elementary students in reading. The Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES) was adapted to create a reading‐specific teacher efficacy scale, which is referred to as the RTSES. This scale was used to investigate whether tutors with high efficacy used more reading strategies while teaching elementary students to read. The study also examined whether high efficacy was correlated with reading strategy use. Analyses of pre‐test and post‐test data showed that reading efficacy and strategy use were not correlated, and that tutors with high efficacy scores did not use a significantly higher number of reading strategies while tutoring than those with low efficacy scores. The findings suggest that pre‐service teachers' efficacy did not affect their reading strategy use while tutoring elementary students. There is a need for more research to further investigate the impact that high efficacy has on tutoring.     

论pre—reading在阅读教学中的重要性

英语课程标准要求高中阶段应当侧重阅读能力的培养,兼顾听、说和写的能力的提高。英语阅读教学是英语教学的重要组成部分,有效的英语阅读教学是学生积累语言知识、锻炼语言技能和培养跨文化意识的重要途径。目前,我国的阅读课教学多采用整体阅读教学法,包括“读前活动”（pre—reading）、“阅读活动”（while—reading）和“读后活动”（post—reading）三个部分。     

Kindergarten teachers adjust their teaching practices in accordance with children’s academic pre‐skills

This study examined the extent to which kindergarten children’s academic pre‐skills are associated with their teachers’ subsequent teaching practices. The pre‐skills in reading and math of 1268 children (655 boys, 613 girls) were measured in kindergarten in the fall. A pair of trained observers used the Classroom Assessment Scoring System instrument to observe 49 kindergarten teachers on their emotional support, classroom organisation and instructional support in kindergarten in the spring. The results of the multilevel modelling showed that low levels of academic pre‐skills in kindergarten classrooms in the fall predicted high classroom quality in the classrooms later on. The results suggest that the overall level of children’s academic pre‐skills in the classroom plays an important role in the ways in which teachers adapt their instructional practices to the needs of a particular classroom.     

Book Reading in Leisure Time: Long‐Term changes in young peoples' book reading habits

In this study, the merit of using deliberative democratic evaluations is studied in light of ten questions asked by House and Howe, which defined the approach and raise issues of interests, representation, and choice of stakeholders, power balances and procedures for controlling them, participation, reflection and deliberation. Suggestions by Clark and Moss for using a mosaic approach were followed. This indicates, when listening to children, many fragments integrate into a whole picture. The emphasis here was on listening to children's views and defining values and evaluation criteria so that they reflect our definition of childhood and quality of childcare. Children had other priorities than parents and staff in some instances, for example regarding length of stay and autonomy. Greene's issues of power, core matters, and biases were utilized for reflection on issues.     

Undergraduates’ text messaging language and literacy skills

Research investigating whether people’s literacy skill is being affected by the use of text messaging language has produced largely positive results for children, but mixed results for adults. We asked 150 undergraduate university students in Western Canada and 86 in South Eastern Australia to supply naturalistic text messages and to complete nonword reading and spelling tasks. The Australian students also completed two further real word and nonword reading tasks, a spoonerisms task, a questionnaire regarding their reading history, and a nonverbal reasoning task. We found few significant correlations between literacy scores and both use of textisms (such as u for you) and measures of texting experience. Specifically, textism use was negatively correlated with spelling for the Canadian students, and with scores for timed nonword reading, spoonerisms, and Adult Reading History for the Australian students. Length of phone ownership was negatively correlated with spelling (Canadians), but positively correlated with Word Attack scores (Australians), whereas daily message sending volumes were negatively correlated with Word Attack scores (Australians). Australian students who thought that using textisms was more appropriate had poorer nonword reading and reported having had more difficulty learning to read, than those who found it less appropriate. We conclude that there is inconsistent evidence for negative relationships between adults’ use of textisms and their literacy skills, and that these associations may be influenced by attitudes towards the appropriateness of textism use. A model of the potential relationship between adults’ textism use and literacy skills is presented.     

Developing Model‐Based Reasoning

Key elements of the structure and function of models in mathematics and science are identified. These elements are used as a basis for discussing the development of model‐based reasoning. A microgenetic study examines the beginnings of model‐based reasoning in a pair of fourth‐ and fifth‐grade children who solved several problems about chance and probability. Results are reported in the form of a cognitive model of children's problem‐solving performance. The cognitive model explains a transition in children's reasoning from tacit reliance on empirical regularity to a form of model‐based reasoning. Several factors fostering change in children's thinking are identified, including the role of notations, peer interaction, and teacher assistance. We suggest that model‐based reasoning is a slowly‐developing capability that emerges only with proper contextual and social support and that future study should be carried out in classrooms, where these forms of assistance can also be part of the object of study.

Model‐based reasoning is a significant intellectual milestone because it bridges the worlds of personal, intuitive knowledge, on the one hand, and mathematical‐scientific theory, on the other. However, across disciplines, consensus is still forming about what model‐based reasoning comprises, and there is little knowledge about its ontogenetic origins or how it develops. We consider analogy as the core of modeling, because in model‐based reasoning a system in one domain is used to understand a system in another. To understand how models come to play a role in reasoning, it is important to initiate study of their origins. Accordingly, we report a microgenetic study examining the beginnings of model‐based reasoning in a pair of young children solving problems about chance and probability. In this study we are engaged in the enterprise of modeling the development of modeling. That is, we report our results in the form of a cognitive model of children's problem‐solving performance that explains a transition in reasoning from a tacit reliance on empirical regularity to a form of model‐based reasoning. It is important to note the two distinct meanings for the term model used in this article. The first describes how children come to understand and appropriate a system of reasoning exemplified in practices of modeling. The second describes a research tool, a model of human reasoning—specifically, how children in this study began to use models of probability to reason about uncertain events. In this report, we use the terms model or model‐based reasoning to refer to the former interpretation, whereas references to a cognitive model denote the simulation of children's thinking—in this case, implemented as a computer program.

Before describing the empirical work, we first identify some key elements of the structure and function of models. Next, these elements of modeling are used as the basis for generating some conjectures about the development of model‐based reasoning. We describe a task that we used as a window to understanding progression in student reasoning toward reliance on models as tools for thought. We present our rationale for developing cognitive models of student performance and explain some choices concerning the implementation of the cognitive model reported here. Finally, we turn to the children's performance on chance and probability tasks and explain how that performance illuminates both what children do not understand about models and the kinds of relevant knowledge that they are acquiring.     

Parental strategies to scaffold emergent writing skills in the pre‐school child within the home environment

Joint writing activities between parent and child can enhance literacy skills in young children. This paper describes the strategies used by a mother to scaffold her daughter’s alphabet letter shaping, word and story writing in the years before formal schooling. The strategies included identifying alphabet letters embedded in environmental print and books, tracing letter shapes with fingers whilst using directional language, and using whole‐arm movements to form letter shapes in the air. Writing samples and examples of parent–child interactions were collected at three to four years of age and are described within the framework of Gentry’s writing stages. The joint writing techniques and activities illustrated in this case study emphasise the use of letter names and letter shapes and may provide effective strategies for parents and early childhood educators to scaffold emergent writing development in young children.     

The modality effect on reading literacy: perspectives from students’ online reading habits,cognitive and metacognitive strategies,and web navigation skills across regions

This study tested the effects of the modality of reading formats (electronic vs. print), online reading habits (engagement in different online reading activities), use of cognitive strategies, metacognitive knowledge, and navigation skills on printed and electronic reading literacy across regions. Participants were 31,784 fifteen-year-old students (50.78% female) from 19 countries and economies in the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment database. Results showed that students exhibited better reading literacy in the print environment. Moreover, information-seeking activities, control strategies, knowledge of metacognitive strategies, and navigation skills positively predicted reading literacy in both print and electronic formats for all regions, whereas social reading activities negatively predicted reading literacy in print and were most harmful for the Asian region in both formats. Memorization strategies were negatively associated with reading literacy in both formats for Australasian, Western and Eastern EU, and South American regions, but not for the Asian region. Online reading habits, regardless of types, had no impact on reading literacy in both formats for the South American region. The study findings provided suggestions for literacy instruction in the e-learning era across different regions.     

Political oratory in pre‐revolutionary America

German Psychological Warfare: Survey and Bibliography. Edited by Ladislas Farago and L. F. Gittler, Assistant Editor, with the cooperation of Gordon W. Allport, John G. Beebe‐Center, Edwin G. Boring, Floyd L. Ruch, and Stanley S. Stevens. 51 E. 42nd Street, New York: Committee for National Morale, 1941; pp. 155. $2.50.

Language Habits in Human Affairs. By Irving J. Lee. Foreword by Count Alfred Korzybski. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1941; pp. 278 + xxvii. $1.25.

Humanistic Studies in Honor of John Calvin Metcalf (University of Virginia Studies, Vol. I). By Various Contributors. Charlottesville (Va.): The University of Virginia, 1941. x + 338 pp.

Producing the Play. By John Gassner, and The New Scene Technician's Handbook. By Philip Barber. New York: The Dryden Press, 1941; pp. xxvii + 744, illustrated. $3.25.

The Jingle Book. By Alice L. Wood. New York: E. P. Dutton &; Co., Inc. 1940; pp. 208. $1.25.

Speech Improvement Cards, By Bryng Bryngelson and Esther Glaspey. New York: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1941. $3.60.

Practice Steps in English. By Frederick H. Blair, Elma A. Neal, Inez Foster, Ollie P. Storm. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1941. 29 cents each.

Debate Index Supplement. The Reference Shelf, Vol. 14, No. 9. Compiled by Julia E. Johnson. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1941; pp. 90; $.75.

Military Training: The Fifteenth Annual Debate Handbook. Edited by Bower Aly for the Committee on Debate Materials and Interstate Cooperation of the National University Extension Association. Columbia (Mo.): Lucas Brothers, 1941. vols.; Vol. I, 220 pp.; Vol. II (supplement), 220 pp. $1.00 each volume.

Universal Military Service. (The Reference Shelf, Vol. 15, No. 2). Edited by Robert E. Summers and Harrison B. Summers. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1941; 280 pp. $1.25.

Compulsory Military Training. (The Reference Shelf, Vol. 14, No. 6). Edited by Julia E. Johnsen. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1941; 266 pp. $1.25.

Compulsory Military Service. (Annual Debaters’ Help Book, Vol. 8). Edited by Ezra Christian Buehler. New York: Noble and Noble, 1941; vii + 422 pp. $2.50.

Representative American Speeches, 1940–1941. Selected by A. Craig Baird. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1941; pp. 319. $1.25.

A Functional Program of Teacher Education. By The Curriculum Committee of the School of Education, Syracuse University. Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1941. x + 260 pp. $1.25.

High School Forensics: An Integrated Program. By Arnold E. Meltzer. New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1940; pp. 156. $.90.     

Adult literacy practitioners and employability skills: resisting neo-liberalism?

We draw on theories of policy enactment to explore the ways in which the situated, material and external contexts and professional cultures in adult literacy in the UK have influenced practitioners. Our analysis of the transnational (OECD, EU) and UK external policy contexts found that skills-related education is prioritised, with a focus on economic growth through increased productivity and accountability. This can lead to a narrow conceptualisation of literacy as a set of information processing skills needed for employment that limits the curriculum so that the knowledge of the participants is ignored. However, our findings show that there is not a one-way flow from the transnational to the local. Instead, literacy practitioners translate and enact policy texts based on their situated contexts and professional cultures leading to approaches to teaching and learning that keep learners and their goals at the centre of the curriculum. We conclude that shared understandings of good practice and an underpinning value system, along with creative ways of delivering pre-set outcomes, allow practitioners to resist to some extent the neoliberal discourse whilst meeting the requirements of policy and funding. However, how feasible delivering this alternative curriculum is over the longer term remains to be seen.