The quality of systematic reviews of effectiveness in literacy learning in English: a ‘tertiary’ review

Recent governments in the United Kingdom have introduced a number of initiatives aimed at improving the literacy levels of children. Policy and practice should be informed by rigorous evidence, and this evidence should be subjected to critical scrutiny. In the present paper the results of a ‘tertiary’ review of systematic reviews in literacy learning are presented. The methods, results and conclusions of 14 systematic reviews, containing meta‐analyses and meeting all the inclusion criteria for the tertiary review, are presented. The quality of the reviews, appraised using an adaptation of the Quality of Reporting of Meta‐analyses statement, is discussed. Overall the quality of the meta‐analyses included in this tertiary review was good; all reviews clearly stated their research question, and their methods of searching for and selecting included studies; most described their data extraction and used some form of quality assessment of included studies. However, six reviews did not make an assessment of publication bias, which is potentially a major threat to the validity of any systematic review. A number of reviews in this tertiary review are judged to be of sufficiently high quality in order to provide reliable evidence for the effectiveness of literacy interventions.     

The role of comprehension monitoring in Children's revision

Revision is a critically important component of the writing process, yet much research indicates that young children are often reluctant to revise unless provided with strong adult encouragement and support. Children's limited comprehension monitoring ability may contribute to their difficulty with revision. Children in the early elementary school years have been found to systematically overestimate the clarity of text, and therefore they often fail to identify potential comprehension problems that might be experienced by a naive reader. Conversely, accurate assessment of text comprehensibility has been shown to lead to successful revisions by both older and younger children. Recent studies indicate that training in comprehension monitoring strategies in turn yields benefits for children's revision.     

Stability of biases in self-evaluation and relations to well-being among elementary school children

This paper aims to investigate to what extent a bias in self-evaluation is an enduring characteristic among children, and whether there is a relationship between the trajectory of children's self-evaluation bias over a five-year period and their psychosocial adjustment. 462 children (200 boys) in Grade 3 (mean age = 8.6 years old) or Grade 4 (mean age = 9.7 years old) at the outset of the study participated following their parents’ written consent. The group-based approach using a multinomial modeling strategy allowed identifying five groups based on changes in the children's self-evaluation bias over the five-year period. Children in the stable and highly positive bias group stood out as having markedly more positive scores on all indices of psychosocial adjustment, and also outperformed the other children in achievement in language arts and math.     

The Design and Conduct of Randomised Controlled Trials in Education: Lessons from health care

There are increasing calls within the educational research community to undertake more randomised controlled trials (RCTs). Whilst educational researchers turned away from using the RCT in the last 30 years, health care researchers have adopted the method with vigour. However, there have been many methodological innovations of the RCT, developed by health services researchers, in recent years. Many of these innovations are directly applicable to educational research. In this paper we describe some of the important aspects of trial methodology that educational researchers ought to consider when they design and undertake trials. Specifically, we describe the importance of systematic reviews, the need for a trial protocol, sample size requirements, outcome measures, concealment of the randomisation process from the investigators, intention to treat analysis, and the metric--numbers needed to teach (NNT). Addition ally, we argue that there are considerable similarities between health and education allowing the use of RCT methodological innovations to be directly utilised in educational research.     

Editorial: conceptualising Early School Leaving

Early school leaving has been identified as a key policy priority across Europe. In this article, we critically discuss the underpinning assumptions and rationale for this policy focus, challenging the association that is made between early school leaving, economic growth and employment. We suggest that ESL is important, not because it is inhibiting growth or that it is responsible for high levels of youth unemployment, but because it helps to sustain and reproduce inequalities. We problematise the utilitarian conceptualisation of education and linear models of educational pathways that are embedded in this policy framework and critically discuss strategies that are proposed to address early school leaving. We argue that the key criteria for assessing such strategies should be the extent to which they meet social equity and social inclusion goals.     

Who takes risks in high-risk sports? A typological personality approach

We investigated the risk-taking behaviors of 302 men involved in high-risk sports (downhill skiing mountaineering rock climbing, paragliding, or skydiving). The sportsmen were classified using a typological approach to personality based on eight personality types, which were constructed from combinations of neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness. Results showed that personality types with a configuration of low conscientiousness combined with high extraversion and/or high neuroticism (impulsive, hedonistic, insecure) were greater risk-takers. Conversely, personality types with a configuration of high conscientiousness combined with low extraversion and/or high extraversion (skeptic, brooder, entrepreneur) were lower risk-takers. Results are discussed in the context of typology and other approaches to understanding who takes risks in high-risk domains.