Dyslexie font does not benefit reading in children with or without dyslexia

In two experiments, the claim was tested that the font “Dyslexie”, specifically designed for people with dyslexia, eases reading performance of children with (and without) dyslexia. Three questions were investigated. (1) Does the Dyslexie font lead to faster and/or more accurate reading? (2) Do children have a preference for the Dyslexie font? And, (3) is font preference related to reading performance? In Experiment 1, children with dyslexia (n?=?170) did not read text written in Dyslexie font faster or more accurately than in Arial font. The majority preferred reading in Arial and preference was not related to reading performance. In Experiment 2, children with (n?=?102) and without dyslexia (n?=?45) read word lists in three different font types (Dyslexie, Arial, Times New Roman). Words written in Dyslexie font were not read faster or more accurately. Moreover, participants showed a preference for the fonts Arial and Times New Roman rather than Dyslexie, and again, preference was not related to reading performance. These experiments clearly justify the conclusion that the Dyslexie font neither benefits nor impedes the reading process of children with and without dyslexia.     

Social play of young children at‐risk of learning difficulties: a situated performance?

The question asked by this study was whether information on play behaviour of young children at‐risk of learning difficulties could act as a diagnostic means of investigating emerging learning difficulties. A sociocultural perspective was taken to examine the role of interaction during the play of students in a regular primary school and in a special primary school using a multimethod approach. Groups of students from both schools were studied during eight 30‐minute sessions over a period of 3 weeks. The groups were matched with respect to age and language development and then divided into two further groups of three students each per school. Each group was invited to build a zoo using toy animals and wooden blocks. The 32 sessions were videotaped, transcribed, and analysed microgenetically with measures involving the types of collaboration during play and metaplay. The results showed that the number of episodes and the most elaborate type of collaboration occurred more often in the regular primary school than in the special school, whereas the frequency of metaplay did not differ significantly between the schools. Fragments of discourse obtained during the sessions are presented and discussed. It is concluded from the findings that social play may emerge as a situated performance. Thus, information on social development of young children at‐risk of learning difficulties needs to be related to the school as a context in order to improve diagnostic decision‐making when placement of these children in special education is considered.     

Goals,data use,and instruction: the effect of a teacher professional development program on reading achievement

In this paper, we investigated whether student reading comprehension could be improved with help of a teacher Professional Development (PD) program targeting goals, data use, and instruction. The effect of this PD program on 2nd- and 3rd-grade student achievement was examined using a pretest-posttest control group design. Applying propensity score matching, 35 groups in the experimental condition were matched to 35 control groups. Students in the experimental condition (n = 420) scored significantly higher on a standardized assessment than the control condition (n = 399), the effect size being d = .37. No differential effects of the PD program were found in relation to initial reading performance or grade. Different model specifications yielded similar albeit smaller effect sizes (d = .29 and d = .30). At the end of the program, students in the experimental condition were more than half a year ahead of students in the control condition.     

Attitudes of Dutch and German preschool teachers towards professional childcare: a cultural comparison

This study explores educators' reflections on professional childcare practice in different national contexts. The data were collected by showing video clips of classroom activities in Japanese, Dutch and German pre‐schools to experienced German and Dutch pre‐school teachers. The clips were used to elicit their opinions on playing and learning in educational settings through a standardized questionnaire completed immediately after viewing each clip. The participants were also invited to rate the strength of cognitive, social, physical and emotional developmental domains during the activity. These data were analysed by classifying the questionnaire responses into four categories: remarks related to teachers, to children, to peers and to context. The frequencies of the categories and the ratings of developmental domains were computed and compared by t‐tests between the German and the Dutch sample. The findings revealed that pre‐school teachers offered more elaborated perspectives on the content of the foreign video clips than on the clips from their own country. There were also some differences with regard to developmental domains. With regard to pre‐school teacher training it was concluded that the teachers' knowledge base should be used as an input for their professional practice.     

How is the approach to teaching at secondary school related to first-year university achievement?

The study presented here is an elaboration on recent educational effectiveness research focusing on long-term school effects. Central in this study is the approach to teaching at secondary schools and its relation to student perception of the fit between school and university and 1st-year academic achievement. Based on previous research, a coding scheme is developed to classify pre-university schools based on the approach to teaching in the upper 3 years. Schools are scored according to this coding scheme and grouped with hierarchical cluster analysis, resulting in 3 groups: 1 characterized by a strong teacher-regulation approach, 1 with a shared regulation approach to learning, and 1 intermediate group. Multiple analysis of covariance shows differences between school clusters regarding student 1st-year achievement in soft science programmes.     

The development of community competence in the teacher education curriculum

Teachers are expected to frequently collaborate within teacher communities in schools. This requires teacher education to prepare student teachers by developing the necessary community competence. The present study empirically investigates the extent to which teacher education programmes pay attention to and aim to stimulate the development of community competence in the intended curriculum, the implemented curriculum and the attained curriculum. Various types of data are gathered and analysed in respect of these three curriculum representations. It appears that community competence is weakly conceptualised in the intended curriculum. In the implemented, and especially the attained curriculum, this results in no systematic and explicit practice in terms of the development of community competence.     

The microgenetic emergence of cooperative play in 6-year-olds developmentally at-risk

Cooperative play was investigated by a controlled pre/post-test intervention design with 28 dyads of 6-year-old students developmentally at-risk. Selection was based upon cut-off scores on a language development test and a nonverbal IQ test, and same-sex pairs were matched within classrooms. Co-variables were: socio economic status, free play time in school and pedagogical quality of the classrooms. Each child was rated with respect to temperament. Play session 1 served as pretest for both research conditions. Then five play sessions of 20 min within 3 weeks took place in the experimental condition. Eight weeks after session 6 a play session took place in both research conditions serving as post-test. After microgenetic analyses of the data, ANCOVA's were computed of time played in collaboration, and proportion of pretend play and of deep collaboration. The results revealed that the level of collaboration had improved dramatically in the experimental condition only. Moreover, the findings showed that the length of time dyads spent cooperating, and how deeply they collaborated on tasks, was related to how agreeable and emotionally stable they were. Gender effects also came forward. No long-term intervention effects were found.     

News With an Attitude: Assessing the Mechanisms Underlying the Effects of Opinionated News

Opinionated news targets communities of likeminded viewers, relies on dramaturgical storytelling techniques, and shares characteristics with political satire. Accordingly, opinionated news should be understood as a specific form of political entertainment. We have investigated the mechanisms underlying the effects of opinionated news on political attitudes using an experimental design that employed manipulated television news items. Findings confirm that opinionated news positively affects policy attitudes via its presumed influence on others and subsequent perceptions of the opinion climate. However, opinionated news also negatively affects attitudes via hostile media perceptions and evoked anger, especially for people with incongruent political preferences. Due to these opposing processes, we found no total effect of opinionated news on policy attitudes. Conditions are discussed under which either the positive or the negative indirect effect is likely to dominate.     

The contribution of TIMSS to the link between school and classroom factors and student achievement

Worldwide, the interest of policy-makers in participating in studies from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) has been growing rapidly over the past two decades. These studies offer the opportunity to relate the teaching and learning context to student achievement. This article presents the results of a systematic review of the research literature on TIMSS. Its main purpose is to find out to what extent TIMSS has contributed to insights into ‘what works in education and what does not’, particularly with regard to school and classroom factors. The review was guided by a generic framework developed within the tradition of educational effectiveness research. The review showed that: (a) since 2000, the number of publications which use TIMSS data for secondary analyses aimed at explaining differences in student achievement has increased strongly; (b) a number of studies, especially older ones, did not take account of the specific sample and test design of TIMSS; and (c) there are large differences between countries in school and classroom factors associated with student achievement. In the light of these results, we discuss the benefits and limitations of country and system comparisons.     

The hands have it: number representations in adult deaf signers

This study examines a wide range of numerical representations (i.e., quantity, knowledge of multiplication facts, and use of parity information) in adult deaf signers. We introduce a modified version of the number bisection task, with sequential stimulus presentation, which allows for a systematic examination of mathematical skills in deaf individuals in different modalities (number signs in streaming video vs. Arabic digit displays). Reaction times and accuracy measures indicated that deaf signers make use of several representations simultaneously when bisecting number triplets, paralleling earlier findings in hearing individuals. Furthermore, some differences were obtained between the 2 display modalities, with effects being less prominent in the Arabic digit mode, suggesting that mathematical abilities in deaf signers should be assessed in their native sign language.