Children’s first manifestations of cognitive control in the early years school: the importance of the educational situation and materiality

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Executive functions (EFs) embrace a range of cognitive control processes that allow us to control and direct our own behavior, thoughts, and emotions...     

The role of inhibitory functioning in children’s reading skills

Executive functions, including inhibition, have been implicated in children’s reading ability. This study investigates whether children’s performance on an inhibition task is more indicative of reading ability than a measure of another executive function, that is, planning. Fifty‐three male participants were administered a reading test and tests of inhibition and planning not requiring a verbal response. Regression analyses revealed that only inhibition significantly predicted reading. Previous inconsistencies may reflect the modality of the tasks used to measure inhibition. Therefore non‐verbal measures may have highest utility for educational psychologists.     

Children’s reading difficulties,language, and reflections on the simple view of reading

Reading comprehension is a complex task which depends on a range of cognitive and linguistic processes. According to the Simple View of Reading, this complexity can be captured as the product of two sets of skills: decoding and linguistic comprehension. The Simple View explains variance in reading comprehension and provides a good framework to guide the classification of reading disorders. This paper discusses how weaknesses in either or both of components of the Simple View are implicated in children’s reading comprehension difficulties. It concludes with reflections on the strengths and limitations of the Simple View as a theoretical and practical framework to guide our understanding of reading comprehension and its development.     

Children’s morphological awareness and reading ability

We investigated the effects of morphological awareness on five measures of reading in 103 children from Grades 1 to 3. Morphological awareness was assessed with a word analogy task that included a wide range of morphological transformations. Results indicated that the new measure had satisfactory reliability, and that morphological awareness was a significant predictor of word reading accuracy and speed, pseudoword reading accuracy, text reading speed, and reading comprehension, after controlling the effects of verbal and nonverbal ability and phonological awareness. Morphological awareness also explained variance in reading comprehension after further controlling word reading. We conclude that morphological awareness has important roles in word reading and reading comprehension, and we suggest that it should be included more frequently in assessments and instruction.     

Do teachers’ perceptions of children’s math and reading related ability and effort predict children’s self-concept of ability in math and reading?

This study investigated to what extent primary school teachers’ perceptions of their students’ ability and effort predict developmental changes in children’s self-concepts of ability in math and reading after controlling for students’ academic performance and general intelligence. Three cohorts (N?=?849) of elementary school children and their teachers were followed for four years. Children’s self-concepts and performance ability in math and reading were measured annually during Waves 2–4. Teachers rated the children’s ability and effort at each of the four waves. Domain-specific differences and developmental changes could be identified in the associations between teachers’ perceptions and children’s ability self-concepts. Teachers’ ability perceptions predicted children’s concurrent and subsequent ability self-concepts in math and reading, whereas teachers’ effort perceptions predicted children’s math ability self-concept only at Wave 4. Analyses with multi-sample procedure showed that these models were similar for boys and girls and for children in different cohort groups.     

Correlates of Chinese kindergarteners’ word reading and writing: the unique role of copying skills?

Ninety-four Mainland Chinese children in the second and third years of kindergarten (mean age = 65 months, SD = 6.94) were tested on Pinyin letter-name knowledge, invented Pinyin spelling, general copying skills of unfamiliar print (in Korean, Hebrew and Vietnamese, ultimately combined to create a pure copying factor), delayed copying of characters, nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary knowledge, speeded number-naming, syllable deletion, and morphological awareness in order to examine unique correlates of beginning Chinese word reading and writing, which were also tested. With age, kindergarten level, and nonverbal reasoning statistically controlled, morphological awareness, speeded naming, and Pinyin letter-name knowledge uniquely explained Chinese word reading, whereas both the pure copying factor and delayed copying independently explained 11 and 5 % variance in Chinese word writing, respectively. Findings suggest a somewhat independent trajectory of developing word reading and writing skills in very young Chinese children and highlight the potential importance of both print-dependent and print-independent copying skills for the development of early word writing skill in Chinese.     

Children’s writing of argumentative texts: Effects of indirect instruction

This study reports on grade 4 children’s (Ss) knowledge of constraints and characteristics of persuasive written requests (RQ).

1. All Ss wrote a first RQ asking money to improve their computer lab.
2. Experimental (E) and control (C) Ss evaluated 4 different RQ.
3. selected and ordered, out of 30 scrambled sentences, those appropriate for a “good” RQ.
4. A week later, E Ss had a collective “training discussion” on requests.
5. A week later, E and C Ss wrote a second RQ asking money for their science lab.

Results pertaining to different aspects of the produced RQ showed that the training did have some effects but both groups improved in their II RQ. The results were interpreted as suggesting that both groups actually learned what an appropriate request is by carefully evaluating the 4 requests and by constructing a request from a sentence list.     

Knowledge Restructuring in the Development of Children’s Cosmologies

The development of children’s cosmologies was investigated over a 13‐year period, using multi‐modal, in‐depth interviews with 686 children (217 boys, 227 girls from New Zealand and 129 boys, 113 girls from China), aged 2–18. Children were interviewed while they observed the apparent motion of the Sun and Moon, and other features of the Earth; drew their ideas of the shape and motion of the Earth, Moon and Sun, and the causes of daytime and night‐time; then modelled them using play‐dough; which led into discussion of related ideas. These interviews revealed that children’s cosmologies were far richer than previously thought and surprisingly similar in developmental trends across the two cultures. There was persuasive evidence of three types of conceptual change: a long‐term process (over years) similar to weak restructuring; a medium‐term process (over months) akin to radical restructuring; and a dynamic form of conceptual crystallisation (often in seconds) whereby previously unconnected/conflicting concepts gel to bring new meaning to previously isolated ideas. The interview technique enabled the researchers to ascertain children’s concepts from intuitive, cultural, and scientific levels. The evidence supports the argument that children have coherent cosmologies that they actively create to make sense of the world rather than fragmented, incoherent “knowledge‐in‐pieces”.     

Effects of explicit instruction in cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies on Iranian EFL students’ reading performance and strategy transfer

This study explored the impact of explicit teaching of reading strategies on English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students?? reading performance in Iran. The study employed a questionnaire adapted from Chamot and O??Malley??s (1994) cognitive and metacognitive strategies framework. To test the effects of explicit teaching of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies on reading performance and strategy transfer, the study has a quasi-experimental design involving a contrast group and a treatment group, with whom an intervention program was implemented. The treatment group achieved significantly better results than the contrast group after four months of strategy-based instruction. Results of paired-sample t-tests and independent t-tests and effect size showed that reading comprehension and reading strategy use improved with strategy instruction. Moreover, SPANOVA analyses showed that the participants in the treatment group performed better than those in the contrast group in reading comprehension and reading strategy transfer. Results also showed that strategy instruction contributed to autonomous reading behaviors. Recommendations for further research are discussed.     

Japan’s English-medium instruction initiatives and the globalization of higher education

This article analyzes a recent initiative of Japan’s Ministry of Education, which aims to internationalize higher education in Japan. The large-investment project “Top Global University Project” (TGUP) has emerged to create globally oriented universities, to increase the role of foreign languages in higher education, and to foster global human resources. The TGUP identifies 37 universities: 13 as “top global universities” intended to compete in the top 100 university world rankings and 24 “global traction universities” intended to lead the internationalization of higher education in Japan. Despite the substantial funding behind this initiative, little research has been conducted to evaluate the potential impact of this policy on language planning in higher education in Japan. This paper addresses this gap in its exploration of the TGUP, including key changes from previous internationalization policies. It then presents an analysis of publicly available documents regarding the policy, collected from all 37 of the participant universities. Findings indicate a positive departure from older policy trends and the emergence of flexible, unique forms of English language education in Japan’s universities.     

The role of metacognition in reading‐accuracy learning and instruction

Abstract

Effective metacognition powerfully supports actioning of complex tasks. The complexity of English orthography makes mastery of reading accuracy (word identification) an extremely complex task. At‐risk readers thus are likely to benefit greatly from effective metacognition of reading accuracy. Optimal reading‐accuracy instruction involves development of conceptual, procedural and conditional knowledges, evidenced in concept and skills development, strategy usage and metacognitive actioning. It is considered likely that metacognition of reading accuracy and metacognition of cognitive processing both support reading‐accuracy mastery in children with reading disability. Student metacognition (baseline and learned) and the role of instructional scaffolding as metacognitive supports are considered integral aspects of skill mastery and generalisation. Needs for research on metacognition in reading‐accuracy development are discussed.     

Does learning the alphabet in kindergarten give children a head start in the first year of school? A comparison of children’s reading progress in two first grade classes in state and Montessori schools in Switzerland

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to examine whether the age at which children start to learn to read affects their later progress. The study was conducted in Zürich, Switzerland, and compared a first grade class in a local school with two first grade classes in a Montessori school. It was found that although the Montessori children had an advantage over the local children in alphabet knowledge at entry to Grade 1, this was not translated into a significant advantage at the end of Grade 1 in either phonemic awareness or reading ability. Further analysis revealed that pretest alphabet knowledge for the whole group was significantly related to progress. In addition, scatterplots showed that some children started school with high levels of alphabet knowledge but did not make progress, indicating that alphabet knowledge is necessary for literacy progress but not sufficient.     

A review of key issues in the measurement of children’s social and emotional skills

Recent policy developments (such as the Children’s Plan) and the introduction of a new national strategy (the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning programme) have re‐emphasised the importance of social and emotional skills in educational contexts. As such, educational psychologists are increasingly likely to be involved in the measurement of social and emotional skills, either as part of their case‐work or through research. They may also be asked to provide advice to schools looking to evaluate certain aspects of their practice in this area. The aim of this paper is to provide a discussion of key issues in the measurement of social and emotional skills in children and adolescents. These include: difficulties with the underlying theory and frameworks for social and emotional skills, inconsistent terminology, the scope and distinctiveness of available measures, psychometric properties, and more practical issues such as the type of respondent, location and purpose of measurement. The paper concludes with a call for more research and the further development of appropriate measures.     

Effects of explicit instruction on the acquisition of students’ science inquiry skills in grades 5 and 6 of primary education

In most primary science classes, students are taught science inquiry skills by way of learning by doing. Research shows that explicit instruction may be more effective. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of explicit instruction on the acquisition of inquiry skills. Participants included 705 Dutch fifth and sixth graders. Students in an explicit instruction condition received an eight-week intervention of explicit instruction on inquiry skills. In the lessons of the implicit condition, all aspects of explicit instruction were absent. Students in the baseline condition followed their regular science curriculum. In a quasi-experimental pre-test–post-test design, two paper-and-pencil tests and three performance assessments were used to examine the acquisition and transfer of inquiry skills. Additionally, questionnaires were used to measure metacognitive skills. The results of a multilevel analysis controlling for pre-tests, general cognitive ability, age, gender and grade level indicated that explicit instruction facilitates the acquisition of science inquiry skills. Specifically on the performance assessment with an unfamiliar topic, students in the explicit condition outperformed students of both the implicit and baseline condition. Therefore, this study provides a strong argument for including an explicit teaching method for developing inquiry skills in primary science education.     

What Counts? Sources of Knowledge in Children’s Acquisition of the Successor Function

Although many U.S. children can count sets by 4 years, it is not until 5½–6 years that they understand how counting relates to number—that is, that adding 1 to a set necessitates counting up one number. This study examined two knowledge sources that 3½- to 6-year-olds (N = 136) may leverage to acquire this “successor function”: (a) mastery of productive rules governing count list generation; and (b) training with “+1” math facts. Both productive counting and “+1” math facts were related to understanding that adding 1 to sets entails counting up one number in the count list; however, even children with robust successor knowledge struggled with its arithmetic expression, suggesting they do not generalize the successor function from “+1” math facts.     

The effect of dynamic assessment based instruction on Children’s Learning

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that dynamic assessment based instruction increases children’s learning by using a quasi-experimental research design in Korea. In this study, dynamic assessment is defined as a measurement method of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) as well as the qualitative and quantitative diagnostic information for individual children. In addition, dynamic assessment based instruction is defined as a teaching method using the diagnostic information types in order to increase children’s learning. In this study, 59 children between the ages of 4 and 5 participated. Three types of number concept achievement tests (pre-test, parallel test, and post-test) for each age group were developed and the content validity, face validity, and split-half reliability were examined. After conducting the pre-test, the children of each age group were divided into an experimental group and a control group. Dynamic assessment based instruction regarding number concepts was undertaken only with the experimental group for 4 weeks. Both groups took a post-test after completing the 4 weeks of classes. The ANCOVA technique wa ls used for data analysis. The result of this study shows that dynamic assessment based instruction has a significant effect on children’s learning of number concepts (in the case of 4-year-old children, F = 12.34, p<0.01; 5-year-old children, F = 20.03, P<0.01). Therefore, dynamic assessment based instruction should be used widely for children’s cognitive learning.