School resources and the gender reading literacy gap in South African schools

The importance of reading literacy as a foundation for academic success is widely acknowledged. What is less well understood is why gender patterns in reading literacy emerge so early and continue throughout learners’ educational careers. This paper adds to this literature by investigating the gender patterns of reading literacy (why girls outperform boys) in South African primary schools and whether changes in the schooling system can result in favourable changes in this gender reading gap. Compatible with international trends, girls in primary schools were significantly better readers than boys during the period of investigation. We found strong links between material and human resources and achievement in reading. The link between increased resource availability and improved educational outcomes was stronger for girls than for boys and therefore increased the female academic advantage. This finding remained consistent across socioeconomic levels. The implication is that either the school resources available in South African primary schools are more suitable for teaching girls how to read or that girls appear to be able to make use of the available resources more effectively to improve reading. Policy interpretations are discussed in the context of improved resourcing of schools.     

Examining the Relationship Between Emergent Literacy Skills and Invented Spelling in Prekindergarten Spanish-Speaking Dual Language Learners

The purpose of the present study was to examine associations among English and Spanish emergent literacy skills of prekindergarten (pre-K) Spanish-speaking dual language learners in relation to their English invented spelling. Study participants included 141 Spanish-speaking 4-year-old children enrolled in state-funded pre-K programs in a large urban city located in the Southeast. All children were receiving English-only instruction. Children’s Spanish and English receptive vocabulary and code-related skills were assessed in the fall and spring of their pre-K year, but their invented spelling was assessed only in the spring. Research Findings: Analyses revealed significant correlations among children’s English and Spanish receptive vocabulary as well as English and Spanish early code-related skills in the fall and spring of the school year. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed direct contributions of children’s English vocabulary and growth in Spanish code-related skills across the year to children’s English invented spelling in the spring of the school year. This analysis also revealed that associations between children’s English code-related skills and invented spelling appear to work through Spanish code-related skills. Practice or Policy: In order to promote young dual language learners’ English invented spelling skills, early childhood educators should seek to support children’s English vocabulary and English and Spanish code-related emergent literacy skills.     

Illiterates in south africa: who are they and what motivates them to participate in literacy campaigns?

This study seeks to identify the key factors influencing the participation of adult learners in literacy campaigns in South Africa. Preliminary research has indicated that adult educators often do not know and understand what inspires adult learners to participate in literacy education. The present study underscores that illiterates tend to be motivated by the same desire for self-actualization as any other member of society, and may well stop participating in classes unless educators are more responsive to their needs and aspirations. Vocational and economic expectations, children’s education, family relations, health, social motives, and gender issues as well as simply the hope for a better future all need to be taken account of. It is also shown that functional literacy in itself does not automatically empower women in the workplace.     

The effects of preliteracy knowledge,schooling, and summer vacation on literacy acquisition

What causes the literacy gap and can schools compensate for it? The authors investigated 3 drivers of the gap: preliteracy knowledge, schooling, and the summer vacation. Longitudinal literacy data over 5 time points were collected on 126 five-year-olds attending higher or lower socioeconomic status (SES) schools during their first 15 months of school. There were several noteworthy findings: (a) gaps in preliteracy knowledge at school entry favor higher SES schools, (b) preliteracy knowledge predicted later progress over and above SES and gender, (c) during the school year there was a widening of the gap between higher SES schools and lower SES schools in reading and spelling skills, and (d) children attending lower SES schools exhibited losses during summer whereas children attending higher SES schools nearly always gained. Contrary to previous studies, the present results indicated that when there are concentrations of children from higher and lower SES in schools located in the children's respective SES areas, the achievement gap widens.     

The effect of inquiry‐based learning on the achievement goal‐orientation of grade 10 physical sciences learners at township schools in South Africa

Due to apartheid policies, Black African learners in South Africa have been severely disadvantaged in school science. Despite policy changes to redress these historical imbalances, Black African learners continue to underperform in science. Previous research has identified motivation as a key factor that impacts performance. Achievement goal orientation is a construct of motivation that explains learning behaviour. In an attempt to address the problem of learner motivation, this study investigated the effect of inquiry‐based learning on the achievement goal‐orientation of grade 10 physical sciences learners at historically disadvantaged township schools in South Africa. In South Africa, the term “township” usually refers to under‐developed urban areas that were historically created for “non‐whites” during the apartheid era. The findings showed that the experiment group of learners who experienced inquiry‐based learning significantly gained in mastery goal orientation, while the control that were taught through a traditional direct didactic approach had an insignificant change in their mastery goal orientation. From these results, it can be concluded that inquiry‐based learning does support a mastery goal orientation in learners. This orientation is regarded as desirable because mastery approach goals could support positive outcomes in conceptual learning, leading to an improvement in science achievement of learners.     

Language and literacy in nonvocal children with cerebral palsy

Metalinguistic and literacy abilities were studied in twenty-seven nonvocal cerebral palsied school children. The participants of the study were presented four tests of phonological awareness: rhyme recognition, sound identification, phoneme synthesis and word length analysis. Their verbal comprehension was measured using a semantic and a syntactic task. Two tests of nonverbal memory: the visual sequential task from ITPA and Corsi blocks and the Digit Span task from WISC, were also included. These measures were related to their reading and spelling ability. The nonvocal children performed on a lower level on the reading and spelling tasks than did the children of two comparison groups, one matched for mental age and one for mental and chronological age. There were no differences in phonological awareness or in verbal memory. The disabled children performed worse on the verbal comprehension task than the children in the comparison groups. Although the reading and spelling results were low in the nonvocal group there were children showing some literacy skills. A within-group analysis performed in the nonvocal group showed that the reading children performed better on all memory tests, and on the sound identification and the word length analysis tasks than the nonreading ones. They also showed better results on verbal comprehension, the semantic task and used more symbols in their communication. Synthetic speech was more often used in reading and spelling education in the reading subgroup than in the nonreading. Metalinguistic abilities and possibility of acoustic rehearsal are discussed as important factors in reading and spelling acquisition in the nonvocal population.     

Literacy Achievement during Kindergarten: Examining Key Contributors in an At-Risk Sample

This study investigated the contributions of initial literacy, oral language, and social adjustment to literacy achievement at the end of the kindergarten year. Data were collected across the kindergarten year from 48 children attending a school serving primarily children from low-income households with researchbased curriculum and intervention programs. Data were used to create latent variables to represent initial literacy, oral language, and social adjustment as predictor variables and a variable representing word reading and spelling as an outcome variable. Multiple regression indicated that only initial literacy contributed significantly to the outcome. Path analysis also indicated the significance of initial literacy while supporting the shared contribution of oral language to the literacy outcome. Discriminant function analysis indicated that individuals with higher scores on the literacy outcome had high factor loadings on both initial literacy and oral language. Social adjustment did not contribute significant variance to the literacy outcome in any of the analyses. This study has implications for both policy and practice, documenting the importance of initial literacy skills, even from the beginning of kindergarten, to kindergarten literacy outcome and highlighting the correlation between the effects of initial literacy and oral language on reading and spelling.     

Diversity among Spanish-speaking English language learners: profiles of early literacy skills in kindergarten

This study explored heterogeneity in literacy development among 2,300 Hispanic children receiving English as a Second Language (ESL) services at the start of kindergarten. Two research questions guided this work: (1) Do Spanish-speaking English language learners receiving ESL services in the fall of kindergarten demonstrate homogeneous early literacy skills, or are there distinct patterns of achievement across measures of phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and orthography? and (2) if there are distinct profiles, to what extent do they predict literacy achievement at the end of kindergarten and the beginning of first grade? Using cluster analysis, the authors identified four distinct literacy profiles derived from fall kindergarten measures of phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and phonetic spelling. These profiles were found to be associated with literacy outcomes in spring of kindergarten and fall of first grade. The two profiles that were associated with greater success on later measures of concept of word in text, letter sound knowledge, word reading, and spelling were the two that included stronger performance on orthographic skills (i.e., alphabet knowledge and phonetic spelling). These findings demonstrated that there is heterogeneity among Hispanic ESL students at kindergarten entry and suggested that literacy instruction must be differentiated from the very beginning in order to meet students’ individual needs. The findings also suggested that orthographic skills should be assessed and taught early on. While phonological awareness may be a necessary precursor to reading, phonological awareness in the absence of orthographic skills may not be sufficient.     

Effects of reading and spelling predictors before and after school entry: Evidence from a German longitudinal study

Previous studies indicate that the effectiveness of reading and spelling predictors in transparent orthographies is affected by the onset of literacy training at school entry. In this longitudinal study with 65 German speaking children, the effects of literacy predictors on reading and spelling abilities were compared before and after school entry. Phonological awareness, letter sound knowledge, and rapid naming were assessed before and after school entry. In addition, reading and spelling abilities were assessed at the end of first grade. Path model analyses showed that letter sound knowledge before school entry predicted reading and spelling at the end of first grade, while rapid naming after school entry predicted reading but not spelling abilities. This study shows that the onset of schooling influences the predictability of early literacy predictors and indicates that with the onset of formal literacy education, predictors representing automaticity in serial processing increase in significance for reading abilities.     

Perseverance,passion and poverty: Examining the association between grit and reading achievement in high-poverty schools in South Africa

This paper examines whether school characteristics moderate the association between grit and reading achievement in a sample of Grade 6 learners in high-poverty contexts. The analysis makes use of data from 2383 learners distributed across 60 township and rural schools in three provinces of South Africa. Indicators of school functionality are used to split the sample of schools into three groups (low, medium, and high functionality) and separate models of reading achievement are estimated for each group. The econometric analysis points to evidence of variation in the association between grit and reading achievement by school functionality, with a stronger association estimated for learners in more functional schools. The major contributions of this paper are as follows: Firstly, this paper is one of only a handful of studies that estimate the relationship between grit and academic achievement in a middle-income country, and the first to estimate this relationship among primary school students in an African context. Second, the results provide empirical evidence in support of the hypothesis that school characteristics interact with non-cognitive skills to produce learning outcomes, a relationship that has received scant attention in the literature to date.     

Protective Factors for School Readiness Among Children in Poverty

The economic status of families and their children's learning outcomes are closely related. For example, children living in poverty tend to score worse on measures of reading and math performance than their more affluent peers, and this achievement gap is present by kindergarten. In this study, we identified protective factors associated with school readiness among an Arizona sample of children living at or below the federal poverty line (N = 230). Using multiple linear regression, we examined the association between assessments of school readiness, health status, childcare hours, home language, parent engagement, and parent education. We found that increased weekly childcare hours and better health were associated with higher proficiency in math, literacy, and approaches to learning, and may serve as resilience factors for children in poverty that may contribute to closing the achievement gap.     

Social risks and psychological adjustment: a comparison of African American and South African children

In the United States, race is highly associated with social risk factors such as poverty and family structure that may account by themselves for developmental outcomes often attributed to race alone. This cross-national study assesses the effects of social risks on adjustment of racially similar groups of 306 African American and 625 South African 6-year-olds. Poverty and gender were confirmed as risk factors but single female headship was not. Moreover, poverty and gender posed less risk for South African than for African American children. Poverty placed children at risk for immaturity, hyperactivity, and difficulty in peer relations. Boys were more likely to have behavior problems than were girls. African Americans exhibited higher rates of emotional symptoms but lower rates of bullying, destructiveness, and social rejection than did South Africans. African Americans, particularly the males, scored higher on the opposition and hyperactivity scales than did South Africans. Distinctive social contexts and cultural resources may account for differences in adjustment.     

Task persistence mediates the effect of children’s literacy skills on mothers’ academic help

This longitudinal study aimed at examining the relationship between children's task persistence, mothers' academic help, and the development of children’s literacy skills (reading and spelling) at the beginning of primary school. The participants were 870 children, 682 mothers, and 53 class teachers. Data were collected three times – at the beginning and the end of Grade 1 and at the end of Grade 2. Better literacy skills predicted higher persistence in completing school tasks and, correspondingly, higher persistence was related to better subsequent skills. Also, lower task persistence at the end of Grade 1 corresponded to more frequent academic help from mothers in Grade 2. Moreover, children’s literacy skills predicted mother’s later academic help via task persistence: the lower the children’s literacy skills were, the less task persistence children exhibited, and the more mothers engaged in academic help later on.     

The effects of dialect awareness instruction on nonmainstream American English speakers

The achievement gaps between poor and more affluent students are persistent and chronic, as many students living in poverty are also members of more isolated communities where dialects such as African American English and Southern Vernacular English are often spoken. Non-mainstream dialect use is associated with weaker literacy achievement. The principal aims of the two experiments described in this paper were to examine whether second through fourth graders, who use home English in contexts where more formal school English is expected, can be taught to dialect shift between home and school English depending on context; and whether this leads to stronger writing and literacy outcomes. The results of two randomized controlled trials with students within classrooms randomly assigned to DAWS (Dialect Awareness, a program to explicitly teach dialect shifting), editing instruction, or a business as usual group revealed (1) that DAWS was more effective in promoting dialect shifting than instruction that did not explicitly contrast home and school English; and (2) that students in both studies who participated in DAWS were significantly more likely to use school English in contexts where it was expected on proximal and distal outcomes including narrative writing, morphosyntactic awareness, and reading comprehension. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

The Experiences of Foundation Phase Teachers Regarding Reading Literacy Interventions at an Underperforming School in Gauteng Province

South Africa’s education system has been characterized by various curriculum changes since 1997 given that basic education is a priority of this government and policies have specifically been aimed at improving the overall standard of education in the country. Despite these curriculum changes, the findings of tests such as the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) of 2006 revealed that South African learners had obtained the lowest overall reading literacy average out of 45 participating educational systems and the South African Consortium for Measuring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) highlighted that the majority of children in South Africa’s primary schools are not even reading at the minimal required level. In view of the publicised results of PIRLS 2006 and SAQMEQ 2008, several reading literacy interventions, known as the Foundations for Learning (FFL), Annual National Assessments (ANA) and Gauteng Province Literacy and Mathematics Strategy (GPLMS) have been launched in the past few years to improve literacy and numeracy results in the country. Notwithstanding, the increasing prevalence of low reading literacy results in South Africa raised questions about the effectiveness of interventions intended to improve reading results (in: GDE, Gauteng Primary Literacy Strategy, 2010–2014, Government Printer, Pretoria, 2010). Given the background of this study, the primary aim was to establish the essence of the participant FP teachers’ lived experiences regarding the implementation of interventions for reading literacy such as FFL, ANA and GPLMS in order to theorise about the effectiveness of these interventions. The secondary purpose was to add to the body of knowledge concerning FFL, ANA and GPLMS implemented as interventions to improve reading literacy results in South Africa. To achieve these purposes, a phenomenological case study was conducted at one of the 832 identified underperforming schools in Gauteng with eleven Foundation Phase teachers. Three methods were used to collect data namely focus group interviews, non face to face interviews and artefacts. The focus group interviews were held in grade context whilst interview forms were given to each of the eleven participants and they were requested to complete it comprehensively in the absence of the researcher. Data from all interviews were corroborated through selected artefacts which were mentioned during the interviews or discovered by the researcher throughout the study. The key findings of this study show that the participants perceived FFL, ANA and GPLMS as mandatory interventions for reading literacy that are unwanted and repetitious. Most importantly the participants deemed ANA as unreliable and unfair whilst FFL and GPLMS were deemed unsuitable for the diverse needs of the learners at this school. In view of the findings, this study concluded that there is limited value in providing mandatory interventions to teachers with the intent of improving the reading literacy results of learners with diverse needs that are contextually bound.     

Predicting the future achievement of second graders with reading disabilities: Contributions of phonemic awareness, verbal memory, rapid naming, and IQ

Concurrent and prospective correlations among reading, spelling, phonemic awareness, verbal memory, rapid serial naming, and IQ were examined in a longitudinal sample that was studied at Grade 2 and Grade 8. Substantial temporal stability of individual differences in all of these skills was seen over the six-year period between assessments. The strongest predictors of future reading and spelling outcomes were different for normally achieving second graders than for those who had been designated as having reading disabilities. For the former, Grade 2 literacy scores were the best predictors of later achievement. For the children with reading disabilities, however, prediction of most future reading and spelling skills was substantially improved by the inclusion of the cognitive-linguistic measures, particularly rapid naming.     

Home Environments and Parental Support for Literacy: Children's Perceptions and School Literacy Achievement

This study examined literacy in home environments and how children perceive literate events that occur in their families. Four children were selected from a larger study of 129 children. Two children (one African American and one biracial) were from a low income urban community. The other two were Caucasian and from a small farm community. Ninety-six hours of observations over eight weeks during the summer of the kindergarten school year were conducted. Data collected included field notes, tape recordings, parent questionnaires, awareness interviews and school achievement measures. Domains were identified and analyzed for literacy support in the home, The analysis indicated three major findings: 1) all the parents provided support for literacy but there were differences in the way literacy was constructed, 2) the differences in the children's awareness responses describing how they were learning to read at home reflected their home literacy experiences, 3) the home literacy environments of the four children who were from low income families were conducive to literacy development and school success.     

Spelling and reading development: The effect of teaching children multiple levels of representation in their orthography

A novel intervention was developed to teach reading and spelling literacy to 5 to 7 year-old students using explicit instruction of morphology, etymology, phonology, and form rules. We examined the effects of the intervention compared to a phonics-based condition using a cross-over design with a baseline measure. One hundred and twenty children attending an English state funded primary school were randomly allocated either to a traditional phonics condition followed by the novel intervention, or to the novel intervention followed by the phonics condition. The novel intervention significantly improved the literacy skills of the children including both word reading and spelling compared with the phonics condition. We conclude that early teaching of English literacy should include instruction in morphology, etymology and rules about form in addition to traditional phonics. We suggest that the results of the study could inform future policy on the teaching of English literacy skills.     

What We Know,What We Still Need to Know: Teaching Adolescents to Write

The purpose of this study was to uncover any differences in the early reading and spelling processes of children learning to read in a first language (L1) and children learning to read in a second language (L2). The reading and spelling development of native Dutch-speaking children and minority children in the first two grades of elementary school were compared. The children were given a number of tasks to test their vocabulary knowledge and the efficiency of their word decoding (including grapheme knowledge and word blending), word spelling (including cipher knowledge and phonemic segmentation), and reading comprehension processes. Analyses of variance were used to test for differences between the L1 and L2 learners. LISREL analyses were used to explore the components underlying the reading and spelling processes in the 2 groups of children. The results showed that the minority children kept up with the native Dutch-speaking children on word blending and word decoding tasks. On word spelling and reading comprehension, however, the minority children were found to be less efficient than their monolingual Dutch peers. The structural models for word decoding and word spelling were highly comparable for the 2 groups. For reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge was found to have more of an impact on the L2 learners than on the L1 learners. This finding suggests that children learning to read in an L2 should be helped to build their lexical knowledge and that reading instruction should be matched to this knowledge.     

Home Environments and Parental Support for Literacy: Children's Perceptions and School Literacy Achievement

This study examined literacy in home environments and how children perceive literate events that occur in their families. Four children were selected from a larger study of 129 children. Two children (one African American and one biracial) were from a low income urban community. The other two were Caucasian and from a small farm community. Ninety-six hours of observations over eight weeks during the summer of the kindergarten school year were conducted. Data collected included field notes, tape recordings, parent questionnaires, awareness interviews and school achievement measures. Domains were identified and analyzed for literacy support in the home, The analysis indicated three major findings: 1) all the parents provided support for literacy but there were differences in the way literacy was constructed, 2) the differences in the children's awareness responses describing how they were learning to read at home reflected their home literacy experiences, 3) the home literacy environments of the four children who were from low income families were conducive to literacy development and school success.