How Do Children Socially Learn from Narrative Fiction: Getting the Lesson,Simulating Social Worlds,or Dialogic Inquiry?

Educational Psychology Review - Educators read narrative fiction with children not only to promote their literacy skills, but also to support their sociomoral development. However, different...     

How Do Children Who Can't Hear Learn to Read an Alphabetic Script? A Review of the Literature on Reading and Deafness

I review the literature on reading and deafness, focusing on the role of three broad factors in acquisition and skilled reading: the method of encoding print; language-specific knowledge (i.e., English); and general language knowledge. I explore the contribution of three communication systems to reading: spoken language, English-based sign, and American Sign Language. Their potential contribution to literacy is mediated by four parameters on which they differ: codability, structural isomorphism, accessibility, and processibility. Finally, I discuss the implications for additional research as well as for education.     

Correction to: Educational Psychology Early Career Award Winners: How Did They Do It?

Educational Psychology Review -     

Debatable topic or not: Do we have the right to argue?

Are certain controversial issues, even though being part of the public debate, more open to discussion than others? We asked 80 French 6, 8, 10 and 12 graders respond to two letters. These letters dealt with either integration of immigrant students at school, or the right to smoke in public places. In France, there is a politically “correct” (officially dominant and valued) social position regarding immigration which could limit a person's willingness to discuss the issue. In contrast, the smoking issue is widely open to discussion, and most ideas and opinions related to it are socially acceptable. The analysis of certain textual operations characterizing the referent degree of openness to discussion (counter-argumentation, conditional modifiers, …), as well as the number of arguments produced, demonstrated the referent influence on the argumentative text. The non debatable referent, target of reigning socially dominant and politically “correct” position, resulted in an impoverished discourse containing few arguments (primarily ones that support the dominant opinion) in which the speaker distanced himself/herself from his discourse by the use of enunciative position (I think that…) and restrictions (only in a case where…). Referents open to discussion, not limited by social pressure, were conducive to a rich and nuanced discourse. In this case, the arguments were numerous and varied, and the speaker openly took a stand and expressed personal value judgments.     

Do the Demographic Differences Manifest in Motivation to Learn Science and Impact on Science Performance? Evidence from Sri Lanka

The present study examined whether gender, ethnicity, instructional medium and school category differences manifest in science performance and motivation to learn science among secondary school students in Sri Lanka. The mean of five successive term test scores was used as the measure of science performance. Level of motivation in terms of six dimensions was measured by using the Science Motivation Questionnaire. A sample of 1316 grade 11 students representing Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim ethnic groups from the three categories of public schools, which provide instructions in the vernacular languages of Sinhala or Tamil, participated in the study. Girls showed significantly higher performance in science compared to boys, and there was a significant gender difference in the levels of motivational dimensions in favor of girls. Although Tamil medium students possessed a higher level of motivation to learn science, Sinhala medium students outperformed their Tamil medium counterparts in science performance. Significant differences in science performance between Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim students were also observed. However, motivation towards learning science between Tamils and Muslims was not significantly different. Highly significant differences in both motivation to learn science and performance in science were found between three categories of schools. The present study provides information to education officials who have to achieve equity across gender, ethnicity, medium of instruction, and school category, teachers who deliver the subject and school principals who design academic support programs.     

Easy-to-read German put to the test: Do adults with intellectual disability or functional illiteracy benefit from compound segmentation?

Reading and Writing - Easy-to-read (ETR) German is the subject of public debate. Even though it is heavily promoted by officials, its status is controversial. Moreover, the comprehensibility of ETR...     

Children’s transitions to school: ‘so what about the parents’? or ‘so,what about the parents’?

Children progress through a number of life transitions and each is a pivotal point of development and growth for them, their parents and family members. Through a review of the literature, the Bioecological Model will be used to frame childhood transitions as highly social, contextualised and political. This paper will assert that governments, schools and educators have an increased role in supporting parents with their changing roles, responsibilities and relationships as their child transitions to school and that schools need to provide space for parents to share their own transition to school narratives in order to better understand the effect these stories may have on the transition process for them and their children. Finally, schools and systems will be challenged to engage in a strengths-based approach to support parents at this pivotal time in their own and their child’s growth and development and call for increased research to identify ways in which this can occur within respectful, collaborative and agentic relationships.     

Competences for Learning to Learn and Active Citizenship: different currencies or two sides of the same coin?

In the context of the European Union Framework of Key Competences and the need to develop indicators for European Union member states to measure progress made towards the 'knowledge economy' and 'greater social cohesion' both the learning to learn and the active citizenship competences have been highlighted. However, what have yet to be discussed are the links and the overlaps between these two competences. Based on the development of research projects on these two fields, this article will compare the two sets of competences, both qualitatively and quantitatively. It will describe how the values and dispositions that motivate and inform active citizenship and learning to learn are related to each other, both empirically and theoretically. Both these competences are tools for empowering individuals and giving them the motivation and autonomy to control their own lives beyond the social circumstances in which they find themselves. In the case of active citizenship, the ability to be able to participate in society and voice their concerns, ensure their rights and the rights of others. In the case of learning to learn to be able to participate in work and everyday life by being empowered to learn and update the constantly changing competences required to successfully manage your life plans. When measuring both these competences then certain values relating positively towards democracy and human rights are common in their development.     

Beliefs,Self-reported or Performance-Assessed TPACK: What Can Predict the Quality of Technology-Enhanced Biology Lesson Plans?

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Digital technologies have the potential to increase the quality of instruction; however, using digital technologies does not necessarily guarantee...     

Correction to: Academic engagement: assessment,conditions, and effects—a study in higher education from the perspective of the person-situation interaction

European Journal of Psychology of Education -     

Challenging the Visual Discourse of Reading: or,Do Teen Readers Look Like Google Images?

Popular culture images of reading tend to portray readers as solitary individuals deeply immersed in reading a single text in a quiet, undisturbed spot. Yet, in our documentation of adolescent students reading in Singapore secondary schools, we find that there are many ways and modes of reading, much of which is social in nature. Through the use of comparative, critical visual analysis, this paper expands the understanding of what it means to read and to understand how adolescent readers experience reading in school contexts. Visual images serve to disrupt dominant readings of what counts as reading to elicit new considerations for engaging adolescents in reading.     

Do monitoring and evaluation tools,designed to measure the improvement in the quality of primary education,constrain or enhance educational development?

A learner-centred view of education argues that the learner's needs must be understood and the learner must be engaged within the learning process. Governments advocate ‘learner-centred’ approaches whilst introducing national strategies and systems to reach agreed standards and competencies, often globally determined. There are increasing pressures on organisations to provide evidence that the quality of education is improving. Defining quality education and how it is measured has been the focus of much discussion. This paper contributes to the discussion by focussing on the measurement of the teaching and learning process in an Education Quality Improvement Project implemented in Cambodia.     

Inequalities in access to higher education in Africa: How large are they? Do they mirror the situation in the metropole 60 years ago?

There have been many studies of the socio-economic background of students in developed countries; but – apart from extensive commentary on the gender gap – far fewer in developing countries. In Africa, this is mostly because the University record systems do not record corresponding data; and because the international standard household surveys such as DHS only ask about educational attainment of household members which of course mainly excludes current students. This paper uses the record systems of the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) and specifically the Pre-Assessment form completed by all students on entry with information about their parental background.The combination of parents not having more than primary education, renting and not owning land identified only between 1 and 3 students a year. Taking the opposite extreme, the percentage of entrants reporting that their parents had a post-Secondary qualification is considerably higher (around 57% on average) than the norm at the time the parents would have been studying (around 7%). These students were certainly not poor, they are upper middle class. Further analysis identifies differences in the patterns for those at Anglophone or Francophone centres; and trends over the last four years.The paper then reviews the trends in inequality in access to higher education in the ‘mother’ countries – UK and France – from about sixty years ago until recently, to ask whether the social inequalities observed among AIMS students can be seen as ‘derived’ from those in the mother countries, with a nuanced positive conclusion.