The modality effect on reading literacy: perspectives from students’ online reading habits,cognitive and metacognitive strategies,and web navigation skills across regions

This study tested the effects of the modality of reading formats (electronic vs. print), online reading habits (engagement in different online reading activities), use of cognitive strategies, metacognitive knowledge, and navigation skills on printed and electronic reading literacy across regions. Participants were 31,784 fifteen-year-old students (50.78% female) from 19 countries and economies in the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment database. Results showed that students exhibited better reading literacy in the print environment. Moreover, information-seeking activities, control strategies, knowledge of metacognitive strategies, and navigation skills positively predicted reading literacy in both print and electronic formats for all regions, whereas social reading activities negatively predicted reading literacy in print and were most harmful for the Asian region in both formats. Memorization strategies were negatively associated with reading literacy in both formats for Australasian, Western and Eastern EU, and South American regions, but not for the Asian region. Online reading habits, regardless of types, had no impact on reading literacy in both formats for the South American region. The study findings provided suggestions for literacy instruction in the e-learning era across different regions.     

Patriotism in British schools: teachers’ and students’ perspectives

Because there are good arguments both for and against loving one’s country, patriotism should be taught as a controversial issue in schools. But is this pedagogical approach practically viable in the British educational context? Here we report on a small‐scale survey of teachers and students in secondary schools and show that their perspectives and practices are highly compatible with our recommended approach.     

Mexican parents’ and teachers’ literacy perspectives and practices: construction of cultural capital

This article examines the relationships among the literacy practices engaged in by first-grade children and parents at home and the ways in which these practices are communicated, shaped, and fostered by teachers and administrators in two different sociocultural environments in urban Mexico. The differences observed between the home literacy experiences of children in a working-class and a middle-class community included transgenerational communication of assumptions regarding literacy and schooling, as well as attitudes associated with the parents’ own school experiences. Class-based expectations on the part of teachers not only shaped interactions with parents, but were also reflected in the way the national curriculum was delivered, with a greater emphasis on rote skills and traditional reading instruction in the working-class community. The authors argue that the school plays a role in the co-production of cultural capital in the home through its shaping of some of the literacy practices that children and families undertake.     

Identifying secondary-school students’ difficulties when reading visual representations displayed in physics simulations

The apartheid policies in South Africa had a marked influence on the accessibility and quality of school science experienced by the different race groups. African learners in particular were seriously disadvantaged in this regard. The issues of equity and redress were foremost in transformation of the education system, and the accompanying curriculum reform. This paper reports on equity in terms of equality of outputs and equality of inputs in South African school science, with a particular focus on the implementation of practical science investigations. This was a qualitative case study of two teachers on their implementation of science investigations at two schools, one a township school, previously designated for black children, and the other a former Model C school, previously reserved for white children. My study was guided by the curriculum implementation framework by Rogan and Grayson in trying to understand the practice of these teachers at schools located in contextually diverse communities. The framework helped profile the implementation of science investigations and also enabled me to explore the factors which are able to support or hinder this implementation.     

Measuring adult literacy students’ reading skills using the Gray Oral Reading Test

There are not enough reading tests standardized on adults who have very low literacy skills, and therefore tests standardized on children are frequently administered. This study addressed the complexities and problems of using a test normed on children to measure the reading comprehension skills of 193 adults who read at approximately third through fifth grade reading grade equivalency levels. Findings are reported from an analysis of the administration of Form A of the Gray Oral Reading Tests—Fourth Edition (Wiederholt & Bryant, 2001a, b). Results indicated that educators and researchers should be very cautious when interpreting test results of adults who have difficulty reading when children’s norm-referenced tests are administered.     

Synergistic effects of instruction and affect factors on high- and low-ability disparities in elementary students’ reading literacy

Reading and Writing - This study examined the combined effects of teachers’ instructional practices and students’ reading-related affective engagement on predicting the high and low...     

Assessment literacy and student learning: the case for explicitly developing students ‘assessment literacy’

In this paper, we report on a study to quantify the impact on student learning and on student assessment literacy of a brief assessment literacy intervention. We first define ‘assessment literacy’ then report on the development and validation of an assessment literacy measurement instrument. Using a pseudo-experimental design, we quantified the impact of an assessment literacy-building intervention on students’ assessment literacy levels and on their subsequent performance on an assessment task. The intervention involved students in the experimental condition analysing, discussing and applying an assessment rubric to actual examples of student work that exemplified extremes of standards of performance on the task (e.g. poor, excellent). Results showed that such a procedure could be expected to impact positively on assessment literacy levels and on student performance (on a similar or related task). Regression analyses indicated that the greatest predictor of enhanced student marks (on the assessment task that was the subject of the experiment), was the development of their ability to judge standards of performance on student work created in response to a similar task. The intervention took just 50 minutes indicating a good educational return on the pedagogical investment.     

Changes in students’ computer literacy

The CLAT provided considerable information about children’s attitudes and knowledge well beyond computer literacy. It revealed improvements in the use of language, as well as in spelling and penmanship. I understand very well that evaluation engineers would prefer to “partner with teachers” to ensure more thorough grant-funded documentation of the many and diverse process and product outcomes of computer technology expenditures (Baker, 1999). However, a simple count of computer-related terms listed by students appeared, for my limited purposes, to be both a valid and reliable indicator of at least one small aspect of computer literacy     

School‐based restructuring and curriculum change: teachers’ and students’ contrasting perspectives

Abstract

This article is set within the context of a school‐based change initiative, where we studied a number of teachers and students in order to understand the ways in which they understood and experienced the complexities of the change process, and to add their voices to the ongoing discussions around restructuring and school‐based change. We found that although there were some commonalties between how teachers and students experienced the changes being implemented, there were also some profound differences between the curriculum as planned by teachers and the curriculum as experienced by students. For the teachers, the themes of caring for students’ lives, recasting themselves as classroom practitioners and of working as collaborative colleagues were identified; for students, the themes were those of getting used to the place, and of re‐establishing their preferred way of working in this new setting. In our discussion and analysis of these themes we look at the implications for future school‐based change initiatives, and at some of the complexities and difficulties which present themselves as schools take on increased authority and responsibility for self‐management and for the creation of improved learning environments for students and teachers. We suggest that future change efforts should give more importance to the perspectives of teachers and students, and to the interactive and programmatic exchanges of teachers and students. We suggest also that changed school structures should originate in a focus on the improvement of teaching and learning, and on the facilitation of teachers’ and students’ collaborative efforts to create a curriculum for the classroom and a learning community which is both enabling and transformative for both.     

Hong Kong senior secondary students’ reading motivation and classical Chinese reading comprehension

Reading and Writing - This study investigated Hong Kong secondary students’ Classical Chinese (CC) reading comprehension, reading motivation, and the effects of different types of motivation...     

University students’ meta-modelling knowledge

Background: As one part of scientific meta-knowledge, students’ meta-modelling knowledge should be promoted on different educational levels such as primary school, secondary school and university. This study focuses on the assessment of university students’ meta-modelling knowledge using a paper–pencil questionnaire.

Purpose: The general purpose of this study was to assess and to describe university students’ meta-modelling knowledge. More specifically, it was analysed to what extent the meta-modelling knowledge, as expressed in a questionnaire, depends on the scientific discipline to which university students relate their answer and the concrete model to which they refer while answering.

Sample: N = 184 students from one German university voluntarily participated in this study.

Design and methods: The questionnaire was developed based on a theoretical framework for model competence and includes constructed response items asking about the purpose of models, ways for testing models and reasons for changing models. Students written answers were first analysed qualitatively based on the theoretical framework to decide whether they expressed advanced understandings or not. Further analyses then were conducted quantitatively.

Results: Findings suggest that only few university students possess an advanced meta-modelling knowledge. However, significant more students who relate their answers to the STEM-disciplines expressed advanced understandings than those who referred to social sciences or linguistics/philology. Furthermore, university students who expressed an advanced meta-modelling knowledge referred to rather abstract kinds of models in order to explain their view.

Conclusions: The present study supports the assumption that meta-modelling knowledge may be situated and contextualised. Both the scientific discipline and the concrete model to which university students refer seem to be relevant item features influencing university students’ expressed meta-modelling knowledge. Implications for assessment and teaching are discussed in the article.     

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.     

University students’ success: A psycho-sociological approach

The aim of this paper is to propose a basic model to analyse processes of change in educational institutions taking into account both individual and contextual variables. It aims to identify the basic factors of change in order to contribute to reduce the dispersion of research projects, both from close subjects and one subject alone within human sciences, in order to make scientific accumulation easier and to guide social practice better. This proposal is based on Cryer and Elton’s (Studies in Higher Education, 1: 75–86, 1990) contributions, in this case applied to the learning processes of university students. They may account for static and dynamic aspects. To prove its coherence, it has been statistically compared with the data of a survey carried out among university students in Catalonia (Spain).     

Rachel’s literacy stories: unpacking one preservice teacher’s moral perspectives on literacy teaching

While teacher educators agree that teaching is a profoundly moral activity, little attention has been placed on the moral perspectives about teaching and learning of those entering the teaching workforce. As a way of illustrating the importance of helping both future teachers become aware of their own moral compasses and teacher educators to understand ways in which such knowledge can support their students, I use methods of qualitative inquiry to explore the life history of one European American preservice elementary teacher in the USA. In recounting the events of her life, Rachel Rosenberg demonstrates how she uses her own life experiences to frame the moral aspects of her future role as a teacher and especially her perspectives on literacy teaching and learning. The methods used here to elicit and analyse Rachel’s story can be useful to teacher educators who want to understand how the moral perspectives embedded in teachers’ stories influence the ways in which teachers approach and enact the work of teaching.     

Parents’ reading history as an indicator of risk for reading difficulties

Children from families whose members have reading impairments are found to be poorer performers, take less advantage of instruction, and require more time to reach the reading level of children whose relatives are good readers. As a family’s reading history may not be available, a self-report of reading abilities is used to identify children’s background. In this paper, we explored the contribution of phonological, literacy, and linguistic abilities and reported parental reading abilities to predict reading achievement at the end of the school year in a Spanish sample. Children who were starting to read were assessed in a variety of oral language, phonological, and literacy tasks at the beginning and end of the school year. Parents filled out a self-report questionnaire about their reading abilities. Their answers were used to assign children to good or poor reader parent groups (GRP vs PRP). A logistic and ROC analysis were used to assess the variables’ discriminative capability, considering literacy scores at the end of the year as a measure of reading achievement. GRP children obtained higher scores than PRP children did. Performance on tasks of rapid naming assessment (RAN) letters (78.6%), Word Reading (75.7%), and Deletion (75.6%) were the most accurate predictors of children’s reading achievement. IPRA showed slightly lower accuracy (73.8) than did the behavioral measures and as high specificity as RAN letters (96.2%), similarly to the percentages found in previous studies. Although behavioral measures were shown as the best predictors, parents’ self-reports could also provide a quick estimation of family risk of difficulties in literacy acquisition.     

Relationships between teachers’ metacognitive knowledge and students’ metacognitive knowledge and reading achievement

The study examined the relationships between teachers’ metacognitive knowledge of reading strategies and their students’ metacognitive knowledge and reading comprehension. The study was carried out among language art teachers (N?=?34) and their students (N?=?534) in the last year of primary school (ninth grade) in Estonia. Multilevel modeling was used to test the hypotheses of relationships between students’ metacognitive knowledge and reading comprehension, while controlling for students’ previous reading comprehension (in eighth grade) as well as the relations between teachers’ metacognitive knowledge of reading strategies and students’ metacognitive knowledge and comprehension. The results showed that students’ metacognitive knowledge of reading strategies related to their reading comprehension, concurring with previous findings. The main finding was that teachers’ metacognitive knowledge of reading strategies significantly related to their students’ metacognitive knowledge, but not to reading comprehension. These results indicate that students’ reading comprehension may be supported by improving their metacognitive knowledge of reading strategies. In addition, the findings highlight the importance of teachers’ metacognitive knowledge in students’ metacognitive knowledge.     

The influence of home-based reading interactions on 5-year-olds’ reading motivations and early literacy development

In order to understand the impact of home-based reading practices on young children’s literacy development, we need to consider both the types of comments made while reading as well as the affective quality of the reading interaction. Five-year-olds, during the summer prior to kindergarten, were observed reading both a familiar and an unfamiliar book with a member of their family, usually a parent but in one-third of the cases, an older sibling. Children came from either African-American or European-American families. Most of the children (about 83%) came from low income families. Both the nature of comments made about each book and the affective quality of the interactions were coded. Parents also were interviewed about the frequency with which their children engaged in reading activities at home. Children’s phonological awareness, orientation toward print, and story comprehension were assessed during the spring of kindergarten; their motivations for reading were assessed at the start of first grade.Comments about the content of the storybook were the most common type of utterance during reading interactions. Reported reading frequency was the only significant correlate of children’s early literacy-related skills. In contrast, the affective quality of the reading interaction was the most powerful predictor of children’s motivations for reading. These results emphasize the importance of the affective quality of reading interactions for fostering children’s interest in literacy.     

Modeling the influences of upper-elementary school students’ digital reading literacy,socioeconomic factors,and self-regulated learning strategies

Background: Reading is an interactive and constructive process of making meaning by engaging a variety of materials and sources and by participating in reading communities at school or in daily life.

Aim: The purpose of this study was to explore the factors affecting digital reading literacy among upper-elementary school students.

Method: A 3-stage stratified cluster sampling was implemented that resulted in a sample of 592 upper-elementary students from 29 classes in 7 schools. Self-Regulated Learning Strategies Assessment (S-RLSA), Digital Reading Literacy Assessment (DRLA), and student reports of their parents’ education backgrounds were used to collect data on the outcome and predictor variables. Interpretation of these data involved two highly regarded statistical techniques. First, structural equation modeling was used to explore relationships amongst the constructs. Second, multi-group invariance (MI) analyses were used to assess the influence of parental education and self-regulated learning strategies on students’ digital reading literacy.

Results: Enriching students’ family learning resources and strengthening their self-regulated learning abilities could have very important influences on promoting upper-elementary school students' digital reading literacy -webpage information retrieval, reading and communication abilities.

Conclusions: This study also provides information on how teachers can address student resources to improve digital reading literacy and self-regulated strategies.