From Mario to FIFA: what qualitative case study research suggests about games-based learning in a US classroom

This article explores the impact of using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) videogames in a high school curriculum when developed through a connected learning frame by examining the influence that COTS videogames have on transforming students’ literacy learning in-school. However, it must be noted that transforming literacy in school is about more than bridging in- and out-of-school literacies; it concerns developing a deeper understanding of the meaning of literacy in today’s multimediated world, and the ways that these experiences are connected not only to media, but to traditional texts, peers, and guiding teachers, so that we can better grasp how to harness new learning styles and new ways of making meaning in contemporary classroom spaces. To understand how to capture in and out-of-school practices, we conducted a qualitative case study of two high school students enrolled in a reading intervention class that incorporated a COTS videogames curriculum. Data were analyzed via a constant comparison analysis. Findings indicated that the games-based curriculum created through a connected learning frame enabled students to engage in a constellation of connections among digital media, traditional texts, peers, and guiding teachers.     

Bridging the Gap? A Comparative,Retrospective Analysis of Science Literacy and Interest in Science for Indigenous and Non‐Indigenous Australian Students

Previous research has shown that indigenous students in Australia do not enjoy equal educational outcomes with other Australians. This secondary analysis of PISA 2006 confirmed that this continues to be the case in science literacy for secondary students. However, the analysis also revealed that indigenous Australian students held interest in science equal to that of their non‐indigenous peers, and that observed variations in science literacy performance were most strongly explained by variations in reading literacy. These findings hold important implications for teachers, teacher educators, policy‐makers, and researchers. Firstly, acknowledging and publicly valuing indigenous Australian science knowledge through rethinking school science curriculum seems an important approach to engaging indigenous students and improving their literacy in science. Secondly, appropriate professional learning for practising teachers and the incorporation of indigenous knowing in science methods training in teacher preparation seems warranted. Additionally, we offer a number of questions for further reflection and research that would benefit our understanding of ways forward in closing the science literacy gap for indigenous students. Whilst this research remains firmly situated within the Australian educational context, we at the same time believe that the findings and implications offered here hold value for science education practitioners and researchers in other countries with similar populations striving to achieve science literacy for all.     

Skilled Students and Effective Schools: Reading Achievement in Denmark,Sweden, and France

This study investigates how reading achievement relates to student and school characteristics in countries with different reading scores at the fourth grade level. Data comes from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011 for Denmark, Sweden, and France and the multilevel analysis includes two levels: student/home and schools. The school effectiveness and the home literacy models informed the selection of the independent variables. Results show that students’ early literacy skills, home literacy practices and resources, and reading behavior are associated with reading scores in all countries. Furthermore, across different countries there are student/home universals and school particulars that explain variation in reading achievement. Educational policies should address home and school literacy skills and practices, school climate, and school composition to improve students’ reading ability.     

Children's literacy funds of knowledge in an urban Mexican elementary school: changing the approach

In this article, we share the vernacular literacy practices of a sixth grade students in Mexico City. From a sociocultural, ethnographic perspective and based on the contributions of the sociolinguistics of mobility and funds of knowledge, we describe the experiences and knowledge that children bring with them from home and the community to school, to write and read texts on their own during class. The findings show how they appropriate literacy practices to provide meaning to their reading and writing through the relationship between school and everyday literacy and the continuum between their oralities and literacies. Children construct literacy according to their day-to-day experiences, in and out of the classroom, and embed their literacy practices within their funds of knowledge developed at home with their families. Based on these findings, we question the significance and quintessential role that has been attributed to the school in the teaching of reading and writing, as well as the prevalence of individualistic and rigid approaches to the teaching of reading and writing.     

核心素养视野下的小学语文群文阅读教学研究

在教育改革不断深入的背景下,小学语文阅读教学获得了越来越高的重视。在当前的阅读教学中,群文阅读逐渐成了主要的发展趋势,而且众多教育工作者也针对群文阅读做了很多研究。另外,当前对培养核心素养特别重视,因此开展小学语文的群文阅读也要以核心素养为基础,从而在完成阅读教学的同时令学生的语文核心素养得到良好培养。基于此,本文针对核心素养视野下的小学语文群文阅读教学展开了分析。     

Teachers' work in reading literacy across the curriculum in the senior phase of learning

Teaching students to read is one of the main aims of education systems around the world. For a significant number of adolescents, however, formal schooling has failed to deliver adequate reading proficiency. This article reports on a study of teachers' responses to a reading intervention programme for adolescents implemented in a senior secondary college in Australia in 2006. It engages with the question: in what ways does the reading intervention affect senior secondary teachers' knowledge of reading literacy and their motivation to provide reading literacy support to students in content area subjects? Data were collected from 20 semi-structured interviews with 15 teachers over a six-month period. The findings suggest that, despite the success of the intervention for the students, in this particular senior school context the teachers were largely resistant to expectations that they engage with the process of teaching reading in all senior phases of learning curriculum areas.     

小学生语文阅读能力培养分析

阅读是学生获取知识的有效渠道,阅读能力也是体现学生语文素养的重要表现形式。以往小学语文阅读课堂的开展往往忽略了学生阅读能力的培养,学生阅读能力的发展受到了消极影响。新课程标准提出之后,对小学生的阅读量等一些基本的阅读素养有了更高的要求,如何提高小学生的阅读能力成为当前语文教学的重要内容之一。     

国际阅读素养进步研究述评

由IEA所主持的PIRLS是国际上大规模的对学生的阅读素养进行的比较研究，阅读素养是学生在学习的初期阶段所应具备的重要能力之一，是学校各门学科学习的基础，是可以被用来学习、创造和发展．使学生充分参与的一种重要能力。文章描述了阅读素养的三个方面，即理解过程、阅读目的、行为和态度。文章还说明了试题的取样设计，并对测验的实施原则予以评速。     

浅谈如何提高小学生阅读素养

阅读是语文的核心素养,也是一个人的核心素养的重要组成部分。在小学语文课堂内外,都应该致力于多元引导,关注阅读主体,努力营造阅读氛围,尽力寻找阅读资源,当好学生阅读榜样,传授阅读方法,提高小学生阅读素养。     

教师支持对中学生阅读素养的影响:阅读投入、阅读兴趣的中介作用

为探讨阅读投入、阅读兴趣在教师支持与中学生阅读素养中的中介作用,研究采用阅读素养测验、阅读调查问卷与教师支持问卷对559名初中生进行调研,并运用结构方程模型进行数据建模分析.结果 发现:教师支持通过阅读投入和阅读兴趣的链式中介影响学生阅读素养.建议教师在阅读教学实践中要改革教学方法,从情感关怀、学习指导、能力指导等多方...     

“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.     

Developing Energy Literacy in US Middle-Level Students Using the Geospatial Curriculum Approach

This quantitative study examined the effectiveness of a geospatial curriculum approach to promote energy literacy in an urban school district and examined factors that may account for energy content knowledge achievement. An energy literacy measure was administered to 1,044 eighth-grade students (ages 13–15) in an urban school district in Pennsylvania, USA. One group of students received instruction with a geospatial curriculum approach (geospatial technologies (GT)) and another group of students received ‘business as usual’ (BAU) curriculum instruction. For the GT students, findings revealed statistically significant gains from pretest to posttest (p?<?0.001) on knowledge of energy resource acquisition, energy generation, storage and transport, and energy consumption and conservation. The GT students had year-end energy content knowledge scores significantly higher than those who learned with the BAU curriculum (p?<?0.001; effect size being large). A multiple regression found that prior energy content knowledge was the only significant predictor to the year-end energy content knowledge achievement for the GT students (p?<?0.001). The findings support that the implementation of a geospatial curriculum approach that employs learning activities that focus on the spatial nature of energy resources can improve the energy literacy of urban middle-level education students.     

Worlds have collided and modes have merged: classroom evidence of changed literacy practices

Debates continue in public and in educational policy forums about the ‘basics’ of literacy while many have not recognised that these basics may never be the same again. Rapid changes in digital communication provide facilities for reading and writing to be combined with various and often quite complex aspects of music, photography and film. At the same time, educational policy and national testing requirements are still principally focused on the reading and writing of print‐based texts. This paper examines evidence from classroom research to analyse the nature of multimodal literacy, the literacy that is needed in contemporary times for reading, viewing, responding to and producing multimodal and digital texts. Examples of students' engagement in multimodal literacy are presented to demonstrate how classroom literacy practices can incorporate the practices of talking, listening, reading and writing together with processing the modes of written text, image, sound and movement in print and digital texts.     

基于核心素养的小学高年级语文阅读教学思考

古人云:"不以规矩,不能成方圆."在小学语文阅读方面,应给学生树好终身受益的阅读标杆,让学生重视阅读过程中的思考过程、理解过程,以此培养学生的阅读能力,让学生意识到阅读应从小做起.本文以"着眼核心素养启迪语文思维"为主题,抓住偏理性思维的核心素养理念,着重探讨小学高年级语文阅读思维培育方式.     

The efficacy of reciprocal teaching in fostering the reading literacy of students with intellectual disabilities

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of strategy instruction on the reading literacy of students with mild and moderate intellectual disability. Students aged 15–21 with intellectual disability (n=35) participated in 24 sessions of literacy strategy instruction (experimental condition) or remedial literacy‐skill acquisition‐ lessons (control condition). The main objective of strategy instruction was to foster comprehension monitoring. Through shared dialogues, students were trained to generate questions about text, to summarise what was read, to clarify difficult words and to make predictions. The strategies were taught using the reciprocal teaching method developed by Palincsar and Brown. This method involves provision of support adjusted to students’ difficulties and peer teaching of strategies. Control subjects were exposed to direct instruction of basic reading skills that were presented sequentially and practiced solitarily by the students. Opportunities were given to respond to questions and to summarise but no strategy instruction was provided to foster comprehension monitoring. Two different measures of comprehension and a measure of strategy use were administered to test for variation across different methods of instruction. Findings on all measures provide support for the claim that strategy instruction is indeed superior to traditional remedial methods of skill acquisition in fostering reading literacy comprehension. These findings challenge the common perception that literacy is an organic impossibility for people defined as intellectually disabled. Moreover, the results add to recent research in sociocognitive instruction that supports the need to modify prevailing methods of reading curriculum and suggests a reconceptualisation of the comprehension process and its instruction to students with intellectual disabilities.     

核心素养下高中生地理读图能力培养策略探究

高中是学生学习生涯中重要的阶段,读图是高中学生必备的地理学习能力之一,引导学生读图、认图、画图,可以在有限的课堂教学中尽可能地强化学生对地理知识的理解力和记忆力。本文从核心素养的角度出发,结合高中地理学科对学生提出的学科素养要求,着重探讨了高中学生地理读图能力的培养策略,希望能够对广大地理教育工作者有所帮助。     

Reading (through) bodies: students’ embodied performances of poetry and testing

This article highlights the complexity of becoming a reader in public school classrooms, by describing the ways students’ reading bodies constituted the sites and discursive means for the performance of diverse reader identities. Drawing on sociocultural literacy and post-structural performance theories to suggest the notion of embodied performances of literate/reader identities, the article combines the presentation of meanings of reading in established curricula and assessment practices with the examination of the particular ways in which those inscribed students’ bodies. Data for this analysis were drawn from a yearlong ethnographic study of third-grade students’ performances across literacy events, and thematically analysed for the identification of patterns and divergences in their embodied performances. Events from students’ reading of standardized tests and of poetry are discussed in detail as instantiations of the reading body: the former of the docile body and the latter of the subversive body that is ultimately legitimized through the workings of school literacy. This study thus holds significance for deconstructing reader identities as inherently diverse and for unveiling both the visible and mundane ways in which discursive power inscribes students’ reading bodies.     

The literacy achievement of Norwegian minority students

The article presents the literacy achievement of Norwegian minority students, their reading habits, and their enjoyment of reading based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000 study. Aspects of their family background and attitudes towards school are related to literacy achievement results. A comparison between Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Germany shows that the achievement gap between majority and minority students is larger in Denmark and Germany than in Norway and Sweden. A more detailed presentation of the Norwegian reading results shows that 35% of the Norwegian minority students perform at a level indicating that they are able to read in a technical sense, but they are unlikely to be able to use reading as an independent tool in acquiring knowledge and skills. The minority students' responses to questions about socio‐economic family background, reading habits, learning strategies and school motivation give a complex picture of their situation in Norwegian schools. The results indicate that there is some potential for equalising differences between minority students and majority students.     

Reading literacy in Compulsory Secondary Education: an exploration of the difficulties in the use of information to answer questions / La competencia lectora en la Educación Secundaria Obligatoria: descripción y dificultades del uso de información para responder preguntas

Abstract

This paper is a review of studies about processes and secondary school students’ difficulties with these processes when they use information to answer questions. The PISA program uses this kind of task-oriented reading situation to evaluate reading literacy, which is also a common reading situation in educational settings. Four key strategies are identified to successfully perform this kind of task: decide how to read the information, comprehend the task, decide when to search for information in order to solve the task, and self-regulate that search process. Moreover, this paper provides accurate information about the students’ difficulties in becoming skilled readers when they use information to answer questions. This information might help teachers and educational counselors in the design of interventions to improve reading literacy in schools.     

A longitudinal study of children's early literacy experiences at home and later literacy development at home and school

Studies of literacy attainment in the early years of school have identified various measures at school entry which predict later attainment. The study reported has sought not only to replicate earlier findings but to investigate significant home factors from a younger age. Literacy experiences of 42 children at ages 3, 5 and 7 were investigated, and the relationship of home factors to literacy development explored. Findings are reported concerning two outcome measures at age 7: children's reading level, as determined by the difficulty level of their school reading book, and whether or not children at age 7 were judged to have literacy difficulties. Significant factors included having favourite books at age 3; letter knowledge and parents reading to children at school entry; and at age 7, access to home computers, and parents’ knowledge of literacy teaching in school. Children with literacy difficulties owned fewer books, were less likely to read to themselves or their parents, and generally had less support for literacy at home. Implications for teachers, highlighting the relevance of home literacy, are discussed. The findings underline the importance of home factors for children's literacy development.