Reading collaborative reading partnerships in a school community

ABSTRACT

This article is an investigation into the Reading Partners scheme at a large inner London comprehensive school in England; this research comes from a small scale study I carried out as part of my Masters of Teaching at the Institute of Education, University College London. Reading Partners is a project whereby younger and older students within the secondary school education system are paired up to read aloud together in the school library every week over the course of a school year. The purpose of my study was to explore the relationships between these readers and to further understand what is gained from such shared reading. I argue that such collaborative reading aloud provides fertile ground for students’ development and that the sessions go beyond ‘just’ reading and, in fact, make reading become a ‘social’ activity. The significance of the personal relationship these students build and all that happens ‘beyond’ reading texts together should not be underestimated.     

Inclusive education and the cultural representation of disability and disabled people within the English education system: the influence of electronic media in the primary school

This paper examines the picture of disability portrayed within the electronic media presented to primary‐aged pupils in England. The study employed proto‐text analysis to examine 494 separate electronic resources which contained 4485 illustrations, 930 photographs and 59 video clips. The major finding of the research is that the media examined contained a limited picture of disability, one contextualised within medical deficit. The study highlights that the sample media examined promoted a social construction of disability based upon ‘inexact scholarship’ omission and imbalanced information. The research concludes that inclusive education must confront the resources and facilities that children encounter so as to overcome the current injustices which dominate the electronic media presented to primary‐aged pupils.     

The use of structuration theory to conceptualize alternative practice in education: the case of private school outreach in India

This paper contributes to arguments for the potential of Giddens’ structuration theory in educational research. It illustrates how ‘conceptual schemes’ from structuration theory were applied to the author’s empirical research on a type of alternative educational practice in India, ‘private school outreach’. It shows how Giddens’ concepts of ‘social system’, ‘structure’ and ‘agency’ helped to conceptualize private school outreach, and how ‘constraint’ and ‘ontological security’ offered explanations of apparent contradictions in private school outreach practice within the context of the reasons and motivations of actors. It also argues that when schools attempt to do things differently, contradictions may occur because the same ‘rules and resources’ that are drawn on in the production of alternative practice are drawn on in the reproduction of practice. Finally, acknowledging the debates around structuration theory, some of its key criticisms are addressed in relation to the empirical application.     

Video games vs. reading and school/cognitive performances: a study on 27000 middle school teenagers

Video games are a very common leisure activity among teenagers and the aim of this study is to analyse their relations with cognitive and school performances. This study is part of a broad survey, conducted on 27,000 French teenagers (14.5?years old) in middle school (9th grade). The survey contained both a questionnaire on leisure activities practised by teenagers and school/cognitive tests: Comprehension tests, Math, School Knowledge, and Reasoning. The activity frequency (‘never’ to ‘every day or almost’) is studied on five kinds of video games (i.e. action/fighting) vs. seven reading activities (i.e. crime/thriller/fantasy). Results show that there are no correlations or very slight ones between Video Games and cognitive/school tests. Reading activities have potentially important associations with cognition and especially school tests. To conclude, video games are primarily recreational activities and the cognitive stimulation they produce is very different from the one involved in specialised academic subjects     

Building strong reading muscles: ableist language in a teacher’s talk about reading

ABSTRACT

Elementary school teachers are expected to teach reading ‘inclusively’ to children with diverse learning needs. Yet, teachers face challenges in enacting inclusive practices that socially support children while academically engaging and challenging them. The purpose of this study was to examine the opportunities for engagement with reading produced through a teacher’s talk in one ‘inclusive’ fourth grade classroom’. The setting for the study was a pre-K-5 public school located in a high-poverty neighbourhood of a northeast city of the United States. This study combined ethnographic methods and D/discourse analysis to explore classroom talk about reading through a sociocultural lens. Findings indicated that the teacher’s talk, which was largely shaped by dominant cultural Discourses circulating through policy, curriculum and the school environment, sometimes promoted an ableist ideology through its focus on each individual’s independent development of ‘strength’ as a reader. Moments when ableist language about reading dominated during the Reading Workshop seemed to limit the possibilities for students’ participation in reading and ideas of what counted as successful reading. The findings suggest the need to engage K-12 students, teachers, and teacher candidates in critical conversations about issues related to reading and learning such as strength, struggle, purposes for reading, and assessment.     

THE ROLE OF THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHER

The teaching of reading is complicated by the fact that no one commercially produced set of ‘readers’ is adequate in all respects for the development of reading skills. The article which follows provides guidelines by which a complete reading scheme can be developed from a combination of reading schemes; including consideration of such fundamentals as compatibility of vocabulary, degree of repetition, phonic criteria and the selection of supplementary reading material.

This article has been prepared as a result of the author's conviction that no single available reading scheme alone provides sufficient material in the depth or variety necessary to effect the acquisition of reading skills by the normal child. The objective of the study described below was to establish a reading system which would, as nearly as possible, provide a continuous progression of reading material suitable for the wide range of ability of children passing through an infant school. For obvious reasons, the reading material needs to be selected from that which is commercially available and marketed as purportedly complete reading schemes.     

Students’ and Teachers’ Perceptions of Using Video Games to Enhance Science Instruction

Science education video game research points toward promising, but inconclusive results in both student learning outcomes and attitudes. However, student-level variables other than gender have been largely absent from this research. This study examined how students’ reading ability level and disability status are related to their video game-playing behaviors outside of school and their perceptions about the use of science video games during school. Thirty-four teachers and 876 sixth- through ninth-grade students from 14 states participated in the study. All student groups reported that they would prefer to learn science from a video game rather than from traditional text, laboratory-based, or Internet environments. Chi-square analyses indicated a significant association between reading ability level, disability status, and key areas of interest including students’ use of video games outside of school, their perceptions of their scientific abilities, and whether they would pursue a career in the sciences. Implications of these findings and areas for future research are identified.     

The (im)possibility of poststructuralist ethnography – researching identities in borrowed spaces

The notion of site is critical to ethnography and provides a sense of spatial stability – somewhere the researcher enters in order to research what is contained within. Using contemporary understandings of space, the author reflects on two studies to explore the (im)possibility of poststructuralist ethnography. The first study was undertaken in a ‘real’ school utilising a multi-method approach over a long period of time. The other was conducted in community-based schools where minority language and culture are taught. Such schools operate on a part-time basis and are often referred to as ‘after hours’ schools. These operate, as if by stealth, in borrowed spaces – schools not in use by their normal classes, during normal school times. The nature of these schools necessitated utilising different research approaches. The almost transient nature of ‘after hours’ schools reinforce temporal–spatial instabilities as critical to understanding site as social rather than fixed.     

School processes in providing reading support in GCSE examinations

Against a background of increasing student eligibility for ‘access arrangements’ in examinations for the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), this article examines the processes within schools that structure a student's access to the provision of reading support, including staff and student viewpoints. Dominic Griffiths, who is a Senior Advisory Teacher with Tameside Local Authority Education Psychology and Learning Support Team, and Kevin Woods, who is a Senior Lecturer in Educational and Child Psychology at the University of Manchester, report upon a series of four case studies, each based within an urban secondary school offering some form of reading support to students in GCSE examinations. Each case study incorporates student interviews, observations of reading support in action, and interviews with staff who manage and provide reading support in examinations. Quantitative findings show an association between students' preferred mode of reading support and the location in which it is provided. Qualitative analyses revealed key themes relating to the dynamics of provision and use of reading support, including ‘student worthiness’, ‘relationships’ and ‘unfair advantage’. Recommendations are made for a more central role for student consultation within processes for providing reader support to GCSE examination candidates.     

Sponsors of Pleasure: Wide Reading Re-imagined Through Social Curation

This article moves beyond book-based school ‘wide reading’ to propose constellations of multimodal media, including music videos, fashion parades, literary works, online games and material artefacts, along with associated pedagogies, as sponsors of pleasure. The article, based on empirical research with teachers in an Australian secondary school, proposes how the pleasure teachers experience in textual curation and research during curriculum planning might inform understandings of what reading might be for students. The author also considers the barriers to recognising diverse texts as having merit for study. Featuring Mattel’s Barbie, Kanye West and Andy Warhol, the article demonstrates how curation can inspire a vibrant reading fan culture and asks how teachers and students can negotiate or co-design ‘reading for pleasure’ curricula that make meaningful use of learner desires to seek collaboratively and collate creatively traces of meaning across media. Reading is an inevitable, spontaneous and enjoyable aspect of these practices.     

Governing teachers’ work and learning through data: Australian insights

This article reveals the multiple ways in which data are constituted as a vehicle for governing teachers’ work and learning. Drawing on the concept of governance, including in relation to the sociology of numbers, and data from one school in Queensland, Australia, the research reveals how teachers’ work and learning were constituted through practices of: establishing specific ‘targets’, including various ‘audacious goals’ for school and national testing; focusing upon ‘aligning’ all forms of school, regional and national data collected within the school; and participating in various ‘data conversations’ about specific students with senior members of staff. While the research reveals how teachers found such practices beneficial for improving their practice with students, it also shows how this learning was always and everywhere framed within a broader discourse of data, and how this data-centric focus came to constitute what was valued about their work and learning, and that of their students.     

Issues in boys' education: a question of teacher threshold knowledges?

This paper exploresthe effects of specific teacher threshold knowledges about boys and gender on the implementation of a so‐called ‘boy friendly’ curriculum at one junior secondary high school in Australia. Through semi‐structured interviews with selected staff at the school, it examines the normalizing assumptionsand ‘truth claims’ about boys, as gendered subjects, which drive the pedagogical impetus for such a curriculum initiative. This research raises crucial questions about the need for the formulation of both school and governmental policy grounded in sound research‐based knowledge about the social construction of gender and its impact on the lives of both boys and girls and their experiences of schooling. This is crucial, we argue, in light of the recent parliamentary report on boys' education in Australia which rejects gender theorizing and given the failure of key staff in the research school to interrogate thebinary ways in which masculinity and femininity are socially constructed and institutionalized in schools through a particular ‘gender regime’. While some good things are happening in the research school, the failure to acknowledge the social construction of gender means that ultimately the school's programs cannot be successful.     

Playing and resisting: rethinking young people's reading cultures

In this paper I will argue that while young adult readers may often be represented through ‘othering’ discourses that see them as ‘passive’, ‘uncritical’ consumers of ‘low‐brow’, ‘throw‐away’ texts, the realities of their reading lives are in fact more subtle, complex and dynamic. The paper explores the discourses about reading, identity and gender that emerged through discussions with groups of young adults, aged between 16 and 19, about their reading habits and practices. These discussions took place as part of a PhD research study of reading and reader identity in the context of further education in the Black Country in the West Midlands. Through these discussions the young adults offered insights into their reading cultures and the ‘functionality’ of their reading practices that contest the kinds of ‘distinction[s]’ that tend to situate them as the defining other to more ‘worthy’ or ‘valuable’ reading cultures and practices. While I will resist the urge to claim that this paper represents the cultures of young adult readers in any real or totalising sense I challenge the kinds of dominant, reductive representations that serve to fix and demonise this group and begin to draw a space within which playfulness and resistance are alternatively offered as ways of being for these readers.     

Middle-class parents’ educational work in an academically selective public high school

This article reports the findings of a study on the nature of parent–school engagement at an academically selective public high school in New South Wales, Australia. Such research is pertinent given recent policies of ‘choice’ and decentralization, making a study of local stakeholders timely. The research comprised a set of interviews with parents and teachers (n = 15), through which parents – all members of the school’s Parents’ and Citizens’ group – theorized and explained their involvement with the school, and teachers spoke about their views on this involvement. Results are organized around three themes: ‘how parents worked to nurture their children’s schooling’, ‘reasons behind parents’ involvement with the school’, and ‘communication and use of parental resources by the school’. Overall it was found that while parents were making significant efforts to involve themselves in the education of their children and with the school more broadly, the reasons for their involvement were not always consistent, but instead revealed a range of motivations for and conceptions of parents’ roles within schools, which at times were at odds with the teachers’. Through this, the study contributes to our understanding of middle-class parent engagement at an unusual and particular type of school.     

Evaluating the teaching and learning experience for the child with dyslexia in special and mainstream settings in Ireland

This study examines and evaluates special provision for pupils with dyslexia in three different settings: reading schools, reading units and mainstream support. The research focused on the teaching and learning context for pupils with dyslexia, the support teacher, the mainstream teacher and the experience of the student. The main participants were teachers and tutors supporting pupils with dyslexia, and the parents of these children. Survey methods included questionnaires, focus group discussions, interviews and quantitative data on pupils' reading attainment. In addition, a total of six schools, two representing each model of support, were selected as case studies. This article reports part of a larger survey, which evaluated the effectiveness of three models of special provision for children with dyslexia in primary school. The study shows that there are academic and social benefits for the child with dyslexia who is enrolled in a special setting. However, placement in a reading school or reading unit per se does not guarantee that a child will ‘catch up’ with his or her peers. The findings reported a similarity in the methods and practices teachers use in both mainstream and special settings. The discussion suggests that if teachers are to ‘catch them before they fall’ there are serious questions that must be asked about how we are teaching basic literacy skills. The findings suggest an urgent need for a more balanced approach to teaching reading and writing.     

‘It's like being in a zoo.’ Researching with people with intellectual disability

This paper introduces key debates in the contemporary practice of disability research and examines how these apply to conceptualising, designing and conducting research with people with intellectual disability. Specifically, it describes a collaborative action‐oriented reflexive approach to researching the lived experience of people with intellectual disability in self‐advocacy, offering a ‘reflective reprocessing’ of the methodological traditions, decisions, complexities and inadequacies of approaches to researching with such people. Emphasis on mutuality and the co‐construction of research agendas, interpretative frames and meanings is a method that has rarely been seen in research practice in intellectual disability. The approach described enables a merging of the skills of the ‘researcher’ and the ‘researched’ to create a process of integrated inquiry and reflection. It promises the possibility of new forms of co‐produced social knowledge about intellectual disability and self‐advocacy, with explicitly emancipatory values and assumptions.     

Anti‐racism and the ‘New’ South African Educational Order

This article traces the desegregation of South African schools, particularly within the Gauteng region, from 1990 to 1996. It argues that there is a discernible shift from ‘race’ to ethnicity in the educational discourses of South Africa and that at school level the response to ethnicity has been predominantly assimilationist. Attempts to move towards a more multicultural way of operating are affected by conceptions of identity as stereotyped, homogenised and generalised, leading to ‘bad’ multicultural approaches being adopted. Simultaneously, within official enunciations at national level, a consistent anti‐racist stance is emphasised in order to ‘redress’ apartheid's legacies. I argue that such initiatives are limited due to their structurally functionalist underpinnings and their failure to address the complexity of identities contained within the classifications of ‘black’ and ‘white’. I argue that, on both the macro and the micro level, questions of identity and difference are central in developing a school (and societal) environment that is not only free from racism, but other forms of discrimination too.     

Ocular dominance,reading and spelling: a reassessment of a measure associated with specific reading difficulties

The association of reading disability with perceptuomotor problems has had a chequered history. This study examines the relationship between a new test of ocular dominance and reading and spelling ability in a group of 323 schoolchildren. Similar rates for unfixed ocular dominance were found for poor readers as in comparable studies. The rates of unstable ocular dominance did not differ between those with reading and spelling difficulties and controls. These findings in a ‘blind’ study question the role of this test of eye dominance as a diagnosis of ‘dyslexia’.