Investigating students' perceived cognitive needs in university academic reading: a latent variable approach

Although there have been extensive theoretical discussions on the various reading skills needed in academic situations, empirical investigations on this topic are scarce. There is even much less research on the latent structure underlying those skill needs. This study attempts to fill this gap by investigating the perceived factorial structure of academic reading skills and the relative importance of each factor based on questionnaire responses by 221 undergraduates from an English‐medium university in New Zealand. A series of factor analyses and hierarchical model testing revealed that the respondents' perceived needs in academic reading consisted of five distinguishable subdomains, which could be further divided into non‐expeditious reading and expeditious reading. It was also found that the subdomain of textbase comprehension (e.g., understanding explicit details and main ideas) was needed significantly more than other subdomains, although all subdomains were reported to be needed more than half of the time. These findings not only support previous major theoretical discussions about reading types from a novel perspective (i.e., students' perceived needs) but also help specify the skill areas that academic reading curricula and assessments may need to cover and prioritise.     

Conducting evaluation research with children exposed to violence: How technological innovations in methodologies and data collection may enhance the process

Research and program evaluation processes that engage children and youth are becoming much more common due to influences from children’s rights and the acknowledgement that children have the capacity to contribute to research, both as participants and co-researchers (Roberts, 2017). Recent technological advances in the form of tablet and internet-based applications have provided researchers with additional methodological tools to better capture the voices and experiences of children and their caregivers (Livingstone & Blum-Ross, 2017). However, little has been written on the ways in which these new technological advances can improve research experiences for children who have been exposed to intimate partner and family violence, as well as other forms of traumatic experiences. This paper provides a review of current literature and a case study example of how one children’s mental health agency has implemented tablet-based data collection procedures.     

Delivering reading intervention to the poorest children: The case of Liberia and EGRA-Plus,a primary grade reading assessment and intervention

As governments, donors and implementation organisations re-focus Education for All Goals in terms of quality of education, increasing concerns have been raised over low literacy levels in developing countries. This paper provides key learning from the application of an early reading intervention applied in post-conflict Liberia, which included a robust assessment tool (Early Grade Reading Assessment) to measure the impact of the programme on students’ reading levels. A rationale for the design and methodology applied by the two implementing organisations (Research Triangle Institute (RTI) and Concern Worldwide) is provided, situated within the Liberian education context. The paper demonstrates the positive impact on programme quality, contextual relevancy and scale-up that a diagnostic baseline assessment has when linked to a tailored literacy intervention. Lessons learnt are presented to guide the identification of best practice in early literacy interventions at national-level and internationally.     

Artifactual dimensions of visual rhetoric: what a content analysis of 114 peer-reviewed articles reveals about data collection reporting

This content analysis examined how the authors of 114 peer-reviewed journal articles explained their empirical approaches to visual rhetoric scholarship. The authors content analysis sought to answer the question: how do scholars engage with the material dimensions of visual culture, specifically in terms of artifact selection and reporting data collection procedures? The answers to this question, the authors argue, are needed urgently as visual rhetoric research continues to expand because inconsistent reporting will hinder replicability and the reader’s access to the author’s argument. The authors use the findings of their content analysis to surface the implicit norms of empirical visual rhetoric research and to develop recommendations for reporting visual data collection procedures.     

A study into the impact of the Reading Education Assistance Dogs scheme on reading engagement and motivation to read among Early Years Foundation-Stage children

This research explores the impact of the Reading Education Assistance Dogs (READ) scheme on reading engagement and motivation among Early Years Foundation-Stage children using a case study approach at a primary school in the English Midlands. There is a notable lack of UK-based research into the READ scheme, which offers a potential alternative method for promoting engagement among young readers. This study used qualitative techniques to determine if the READ scheme is reported to have an impact; and if so, what type of impact. The findings suggest that the READ scheme is successful in a number of areas, including promoting engagement, increased motivation, improved attainment, fostering children’s enjoyment and promoting a love of reading, alongside other additional benefits for specific target groups. It must be recognised that this case study is based on a small pool of opportunity-sampled participants, so the findings cannot be further generalised, but do provide a useful insight into an under-researched area, as a starting point for which more specific aspects and impacts could be investigated.     

Literacy as a complex activity: deconstructing the simple view of reading

The Rose Review into the teaching of early reading recommended that the conceptual framework incorporated into the National Literacy Strategy Framework for Teaching – the Searchlights model of reading and its development – should be replaced by the Simple View of Reading. In this paper, we demonstrate how these two frameworks relate to each other, and show that nothing has been lost in this transformation from Searchlights to Simple View: on the contrary, much has been gained. That nothing has been lost is demonstrated by consideration of the underlying complexity inherent in each of the two dimensions delineated in the Simple View. That much has been gained is demonstrated by the increased understanding of each dimension that follows from careful scientific investigation of each. The better we understand what is involved in each dimension, the better placed we are to unravel and understand the essential, complex and continual interactions between each dimension which underlie skilled reading. This has clear implications for further improving the early teaching of reading.     

The associations between child and item characteristics,use of vocabulary scaffolds,and reading comprehension in a digital environment: Insights from a big data approach

Scaffolding features that provide multimodal support for the pronunciation and meaning of words are increasingly common in digital reading environments. These vocabulary scaffolds are intended to aid the accurate pronunciation and understanding of individual words in context, thus supporting both vocabulary development and comprehension of text. However, the evidence on their efficacy remains inconclusive. The present study adds to the evidence base by examining: 1) whether child characteristics predict the use of vocabulary scaffolds; 2) whether the use of vocabulary scaffolds is associated with reading comprehension performance; and 3) whether the association between the use of scaffolds and reading comprehension is modulated by child and/or item characteristics. A large cohort (N ∼ 120,000) of 5- to 8-year-old children in the United States interacted with a gamified digital reading environment with embedded vocabulary scaffolds, thereby generating a large observational dataset of user log files. Confirmatory analyses with Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMMs) indicated that children with lower literacy skills, beginning readers, girls, and bilingual students were more likely to use the scaffold. Overall, the use of scaffolds was associated with better reading comprehension performance. The association between the use of scaffolds and reading comprehension was modulated by both child and item characteristics. We conclude that vocabulary scaffolds may be promising tools to facilitate reading comprehension and reduce performance differences amongst diverse learners in digital reading environments. Educational implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Affordances of narrative and numerical data: A social-semiotic approach to data use

Data use in education is a sensemaking process in which practitioners and researchers interact with different systems of meaning such as anecdotes or spreadsheets. The representational qualities of data and their influence on practice are critical but less well-discussed aspects of data use. Drawing on social semiotics, this theoretical article proposes that data should be discussed in terms of narrative and numerical modes of representation. Narrative data typically consist of protagonists and actions organized in a temporal structure, while numerical data typically consist of mathematical notations and visual representations such as graphs and figures. We argue that the representational properties of these two modes affect how data are interpreted and acted upon. We then present two contrasting cases from New Zealand and Norway of how affordances affect teachers’ data use processes. Finally, we discuss five challenges arising from our theorization about the affordances of data.     

Attitude items and low ability students: the need for a cautious approach to interpretation

The results of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS 2001) were published in 2003. In addition to data about the reading achievements of 10‐year‐olds in 35 countries, PIRLS 2001 also collected questionnaire information from children, their teachers, headteachers and parents. The results showed not just how well students can perform in various reading tasks, but also the relationship between reading abilities and other characteristics, including the characteristics of their homes and schools, the students' attitudes to reading, reading enjoyment, self‐confidence, engagement and perceptions of their reading abilities. Surprisingly enough, children in England were reported as having poor attitudes to reading, compared to children in many other countries, despite high achievement on the reading tests. This paper raises some concerns about the interpretation of results from the study, suggesting a more complex picture than that presented in the summary index published in 2003. Our secondary analysis of the attitude and achievement data from PIRLS shows that pupils with low ability levels have misunderstood the questions which tested their attitudes towards reading. The authors point out that caution is needed when making cross‐country comparisons to avoid naïve approaches to interpretation.     

Performance in solving arithmetic problems: a comparison of children with different levels of achievement in mathematics and reading

The aim of the present study was to investigate the performance in arithmetic related to achievement levels in reading and mathematics. Basic arithmetical facts and multi‐step calculations were examined. The participants were 941 pupils aged 8 (N = 415), 10 (N = 274) and 13 (N = 252) years. The pupils were divided into four groups by standardized achievement tests. One group showed low achievement in both mathematics and reading (MLRL), a second group showed low achievement in mathematics only (ML‐only), a third group in reading only (RL‐only) and a fourth group showed normal achievement in both mathematics and reading (NA). The ML‐only and the MLRL groups did not differ significantly in basic arithmetical facts at any age level, but both groups performed below the RL‐only and NA groups. The two latter groups also performed similarly at all year levels. In multi‐step calculation all groups differed significantly at the lowest age level, with the NA as the group with the best achievement, followed by RL‐only, ML‐only and the MLRL group. At the two highest age levels the relations between the groups, in multi‐step calculation, were in accordance with the results regarding basic facts. The findings indicate, for both normal and low general mathematical ability, that low achievement in reading to a small extent interferes with the pupils’ development of arithmetic performance     

Pathways to reading,mathematics, and science: Examining domain-general correlates in young Chinese children

Early competencies in reading, mathematics, and science are associated with later school achievement and adulthood socioeconomic status. This cross-sectional study examined how fundamental domain-general capacities, including language, spatial, and self-regulatory skills, together relate to competencies in reading, mathematics, and science in young Chinese children. A total of 584 Chinese children aged approximately six years were tested individually on their language (receptive vocabulary), spatial (spatial perception, spatial visualization, and mental rotation), and self-regulation (behavioral regulation and working memory) skills, as well as their academic competencies in reading, mathematics, and science. The results showed that vocabulary, spatial, and self-regulatory skills were all associated with Chinese reading, mathematics, and life sciences, whereas only vocabulary was related to earth and physical sciences. The relation between vocabulary and formal mathematics and that between mental rotation and life sciences were found to be stronger in boys than in girls. The findings suggest that foundational domain-general skills may provide the building blocks for children’s academic competencies.     

The Gourmet Guide to Statistics: For an Instructional Strategy That Makes Teaching and Learning Statistics a Piece of Cake

This article draws analogies between the activities of statisticians and of chefs. It suggests how these analogies can be used in teaching, both to help understanding of what statistics is about and to increase motivation to learn the subject.     

Creating the valuable: reading as a matter of health and successful parenthood

ABSTRACT

There have been increasing demands to improve Swedish children’s reading habits, triggered by poor PISA results in 2013, and public healthcare has stepped in as a strong reading-promoting actor. Drawing on the emerging field of valuation research in STS, the paper explores the values enacted in health-related information brochures about reading that are distributed to all Swedish parents at various times of their children’s lives. The analysis demonstrates how the lack of reading books is enacted as a public health problem that requires prevention and intervention of public healthcare. Health is thus recruited as a stabilising actor in the process of determining the value and importance of reading and where the problem of non-reading of books becomes a private matter for families to solve. The analysis also shows how instances of health-promoting intentions of doing good can in effect be marginalising by viewing specific people as less valuable.     

To enter the text as into a dream: tracing the unconscious effects of reading experience

In this article, I suggest that, when readers speak about reading, the language they use is closely related to the modes and movements of speech employed by the dreamer recounting their dream. With reference to the psychoanalytic formulations of unconscious desire and transferential attachment, this article – with its focus on methodology – addresses the question of how to approach the often-illegible discursive effects of reading experience. While describing a scene in which a reader relates to a text through a dreamlike re-enactment of prior experience, I argue that a qualitative analysis of reading experience must begin with the question of how to consider unconscious effects, despite their disguised, incomprehensible, and incomplete nature.     

Story constellations: A narrative approach to contextualizing teachers’ knowledge of school reform

This article traces the roots of narrative research in the social sciences and education, then centers on ‘story constellations,’ a version of narrative inquiry that uncovers teachers’ knowledge of school reform in context. A fluid form of investigation that unfolds in a three-dimensional inquiry space, story constellations consists of a flexible matrix of paired narratives that are broadened, burrowed, and restoried over time. The adaptability of this narrative inquiry approach is then made visible through introducing four story constellations separately, then laying sketches of the individual story constellations side-by-side. When analyzed in a conjoined fashion, these sketches illustrate how the particularities of place and human agency in the living of school reform played out differently in differing school contexts, despite the fact that the four school sites had one story of reform in common. In the end result, the illustrations demonstrate how the use of the malleable approach drew distinctive story constellations to the surface, spotlighting teachers’ knowledge of school reform as it developed in context over time. In this way, ‘story constellations’ as a method and as a form of inquiry is illuminated.     

The culturally gifted classroom: a sociocultural approach to the inclusive education of English language learners

The need for including English language learners in the regular classroom at all phases of their linguistic and cultural development is presented within a Vygotkian sociocultural theory of human development. Based on the social primacy of development within this theoretical tenet, all aspects of development are viewed to proceed from social interactions. Effective social interactions that lead to development are distinguished by a heterogeneous collective experience of all participants in the interaction. In accordance with the sociocultural perspective, the educational goal of this heterogeneous group is to acquire and use cultural tools deemed appropriate to their time and place. As others’ cultures and languages become rich resources for becoming competent in one’s own culture, the cultural and linguistic diversity gained by including all students in the classroom becomes a powerful source of development for all.     

Paired reading: a structured approach to raising attainment in literacy

Competency in reading is a key factor in literacy attainment. If pupils can read proficiently this allows them to access the curriculum in all subjects and helps them to become confident, successful, motivated learners. Paired reading has long been recognised as an effective approach for supporting reading in schools. It helps to build relationships and encourages self-esteem and motivation. By the pupil reading aloud, either independently or in tandem with their partner, they gain confidence and research suggests that fluency and accuracy improve. However, for pupils who have gaps in their phonological knowledge this approach has limited success as it relies almost exclusively on visual or auditory memory. This research looks at a more structured approach to paired reading that combines both the 'look-say' approach (whole word recognition) of the more traditional paired reading programmes with phonic teaching, to create a tool to improve reading.