The interaction with text of failing and normal readers (Ph.D thesis,School of Education,Open University, 1984)

The research reported in this thesis was designed to investigate the nature of reading comprehension failure with a view to improving remedial reading programmes for those children who, although resembling normal readers in other respects, enter secondary education with an inadequate level of reading ability. By the use of cloze tests, in which the reader is required to restore words deleted from a text, comparisons were made between failing readers at age twelve, normal readers of age twelve and normal readers of age nine who had reached the same level of reading comprehension as the failing twelve-year-olds. The three groups’ responses were classified by a system based on a view of the reading process as an interaction between the reader and the text. The effects of specific aspects of text on the three groups of readers were investigated. It was found that there were significant differences between the responses offered by the failing readers at age twelve and normal readers at age nine. Since the level of reading ability of the two groups was the same, this suggests that reading failure involves qualitative differences from normal reading development. The types of difficulty experienced by failing readers, as reflected in their cloze responses, include difficulties in visual scanning, in reconstruction of syntactic structures and in vocabulary. These components did not affect all failing readers equally. Failing readers appear to have greater difficulty than normal in relating their responses to the general theme of the text and tend to treat it as a series of isolated fragments. They make less use of the context following a deleted word than normal readers. Failing readers at age twelve appear to have greater difficulty than normal readers at age nine in recognizing which segments of a text contain important information. The whole population of a secondary school, 643 subjects, was tested and it was found that failing readers at age fifteen produced the same pattern of responses as those failing at age twelve. The only improvement appearing in their reading was in the processing of complete sentences. There were indications that remedial programmes designed on the diagnostic basis provided by the research results produced an increase in reading age in six months of a similar order to that produced by previous remedial programmes in a year. The increase was approximately twenty-four months on average for a group of failing readers whose mean reading age on entry was eight years six months. The programme caused them to alter their response patterns to resemble those of normal readers at age twelve.     

The effects of phonological and morphological training on speech perception scores and grammatical judgments in deaf and hard-of-hearing children

Seventeen primary school deaf and hard-of-hearing children were given two types of training for 9 weeks each. Phonological training involved practice of /s, z, t, d/ in word final position in monomorphemic words. Morphological training involved learning and practicing the rules for forming third-person singular, present tense, past tense, and plurals. The words used in the two training types were different (monomorphemic or polymorphemic) but both involved word final /s, z, t, d/. Grammatical judgments were tested before and after training using short sentences that were read aloud by the child (or by the presenter if the child was unable to read them). Perception was tested with 150 key words in sentences using the trained morphemes and phonemes in word final position. Grammatical judgments for sentences involving the trained morphemes improved significantly after each type of training. Both types of training needed to be completed before a significant improvement was found for speech perception scores. The results suggest that both phonological and morphological training are beneficial in improving speech perception and grammatical performance of deaf and hard-of-hearing children and that both types of training were required to obtain the maximum benefit.     

Optimizing Intent to Transfer: Engagement and Community College English Learners

Researchers have long struggled to accurately identify the needs of English learner (EL) students and the factors that facilitate their postsecondary success. Although prior research suggests that EL students disproportionately select into community colleges, there is a dearth research that examines transfer to four-year schools among community college English learner (CCEL) students. In this study, we examined whether and to what extent community college students’ linguistic status shapes the relationship between engagement and intent to transfer to a four-year institution. Using data from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement, we used logistic regression to examine how, if at all, the relationships between the multiple forms of student engagement and intent to transfer might differ by linguistic status, net of various student and school-level controls. Ultimately, our findings suggest that students’ returns to engagement do differ by linguistic status, with CCEL students experiencing the greatest gains relative to their intent to transfer. Not only are CCEL students are more likely to engage in academic discourse, internalize teachers’ pedagogical offerings, and recognize institutional supports than their non-CCEL peers, but they appear to derive greater benefits from both academic engagement and instruction in the use critical thinking skills than their non-CCEL peers. We conclude with recommendations for educators, policymakers, and researchers seeking to improve CCEL students’ educational attainment and engagement.

     

Modernisation and the field of educational administration

In this article I examine New Labour’s approach to the transformation of education by focusing on Michael Barber’s account of policy delivery, and I show that while historical analysis is relevant to policy processes it is absent in the reality of design. I provide a critical evaluation of knowledge claims underpinning policy in England before I go on to show the importance of history both for and about policy and practice in education, where a specific claim is made for its relevance to futuring and strategising.     

Children's inference generation across different media

In the present study, we investigated the degree to which children's inference generation ability generalises across different media and predicts narrative comprehension over and above basic language skills and vocabulary. To address both aims, we followed two cohorts of children aged 4 and 6 as they turned 6 and 8 years old, respectively. At each time point we assessed their inference and narrative comprehension skills using aural, televised and written stories. We also assessed their basic language skills and vocabulary. The findings demonstrated that children's inference generation skills were highly inter‐related across different media for both cohorts and at both time points. Also, children's inference generation had a significant contribution to children's narrative comprehension over and above basic language skills, vocabulary and media factors. The current set of findings has important theoretical and practical implications for early diagnosis and intervention in young children's high‐order comprehension skills.     

Efficient Learning for the Poor: New Insights into Literacy Acquisition for Children

Reading depends on the speed of visual recognition and capacity of short-term memory. To understand a sentence, the mind must read it fast enough to capture it within the limits of the short-term memory. This means that children must attain a minimum speed of fairly accurate reading to understand a passage. Learning to read involves “tricking” the brain into perceiving groups of letters as coherent words. This is achieved most efficiently by pairing small units consistently with sounds rather than learning entire words. To link the letters with sounds, explicit and extensive practice is needed; the more complex the spelling of a language, the more practice is necessary. However, schools of low-income students often waste instructional time and lack reading resources, so students cannot get sufficient practice to automatize reading and may remain illiterate for years. Lack of reading fluency in the early grades creates inefficiencies that affect the entire educational system. Neurocognitive research on reading points to benchmarks and monitoring indicators. All students should attain reading speeds of 45–60 words per minute by the end of grade 2 and 120–150 words per minute for grades 6–8.     

Teaching as Therapy

The 20^th century saw a profound change to the model of humanity commonly accepted in the West. At the start of the century the tripartite model of personhood included the components of mind, body and soul, or the physical, mental and moral/spiritual aspects of being. By the end of the century, this had changed to physical, mental and emotional. This substitution of 'emotional' for 'moral' has had profound effects, not the least on teaching. The effects have included alterations to the content of education, including the introduction of programs to preserve/promote children's self esteem, and interest in topics such as 'emotional intelligence'. Also affected, however, has been how teaching itself is conceptualised. This paper will consider some of these effects and their consequences for teaching and teachers.     

Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Social valorization among pupils and the effect on teachers’ judgments

In this article, the concept of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) is transposed from a work context, in which it was developed, to secondary school. Two studies test the assumption of a social valorization of OCB declaration in a school context. In Study 1, 445 pupils (sixth-graders to ninth-graders) answered an OCB questionnaire, specifically designed for this population, according to the three instructions of the self-presentation paradigm. The ANOVAs indicated (1) a higher frequency of declared OCBs for girls than for boys, which decreases with school grade, and is higher for the dimension of Organizational Compliance, and (2) a significant OCB clearsightedness, more significant when presenting oneself to teachers than to parents and peers, and higher for Individual Development, Altruism and Organizational Compliance dimensions. In Study 2, 46 teachers examined the report of a fictitious pupil expressing a high or low frequency of OCB (judge paradigm). The ANOVAs indicated that the teachers’ judgement was more favorable towards the pupil expressing high rather than low frequency of OCB. The normative component of OCB, the social and institutional function which the OCB can fulfill, and the evaluation devices in secondary school are then discussed.