The politics of student voice: unravelling the multiple discourses articulated in schools

For almost two decades student voice has been used and enacted in educational settings for a range of purposes. Student voice theorists have framed it in sociocultural, social constructionist and poststructural terms. It has been located in a range of schooling discourses and there have been powerful critiques of instrumentalist uses of student voice. It has been reified for its potential to leverage schooling reform, associated with accountability, governmentality and technologies of control, and also heralded as a process to activate radical collegiality in educational settings. This article investigates how school leaders from Aotearoa/New Zealand discursively locate the complex and contested construct of student voice in their schooling settings. Drawing data from principal interviews, discourses inherent in school leader comments are analysed to consider the contribution of student voice. A consideration is provided of how young people are ascribed positions as agents in contemporary Aotearoa schools.     

Comparing the phonological and double deficit hypotheses for developmental dyslexia

This study tested the predictions of thephonological and double deficit hypotheses byexperimentally examining speech perception,phoneme awareness, lexical retrieval (serialand discrete), articulatory speed, and verbalSTM in school age child (N = 35) and adolescent(N = 36) dyslexics, and both chronological age(CA) and reading age (RA) controls. Theresults confirmed the findings of previousstudies of a deficit in phoneme awareness indevelopmental dyslexia. At both age levels,dyslexics performed significantly more poorlythan both their CA and RA controls. Althoughdeficits in the other processes investigated,particularly in rapid serial naming, were alsoapparent, they were not as clear-cut as thedeficit in phoneme awareness. In general,definite evidence of a deficit in rapid serialnaming was limited to the more severelyimpaired dyslexics. Furthermore, although rapidserial naming contributed independent variationto various literacy skills, its contributionwas modest relative to the contribution ofphoneme awareness, regardless of whether theliteracy skill relied more or less heavily onphonological or orthographic coding skills. Further analyses suggested that variation inrapid serial skill is particularly importantfor fluent reading of text, whereas phonemeawareness is particularly important for thedevelopment of the ability to read byphonologically recoding letters or groups ofletters in words into their phonological codes.This explains the relatively strongcontribution of phoneme awareness to readingand spelling ability in general. In sum, thephonological hypothesis offers a moreparsimonious account of the present resultsthan the double deficit hypothesis.     

Exploring students’ calibration of self reports about study tactics and achievement

When students self-regulate studying, they monitor achievement and study tactics. Proximal input to monitoring is perceptions that the student constructs based on experience. Productive self-regulation theoretically requires strong correspondence between (a) perceptions of achievement and actual achievement and (b) perceived use of study tactics and actual use of study tactics. That is, calibration should be high. Students studied using a software tool that traced study tactics they used. Subsequently their self-reports about study tactics and estimates of achievement were gathered, and a test was administered. Students were slightly positively biased (overconfident) about their achievement and moderately positively biased about (overestimated) their use of study tactics. An individual difference measure of calibration was very high for achievement but modest for study tactics. It is explained why calibration of self-reports about study tactics did not predict achievement, examine theoretical links between calibration and other prominent constructs, and discuss issues of self-regulated learning.     

Directions for Integration in Australia: Overview of a Report to the Commonwealth Schools Commission. Part II.

Drawing upon information from a national survey, this paper examines the extent to which integration is being achieved for children with disabilities in Australian schools. Technical and organizational issues leading to identification of major barriers to integration together with possible strategies to overcome these are discussed. A need for policy‐oriented research in this field is identified, particularly the provision of accurate prevalence figures and other data to help monitor the impact of policy. Overall, there is evidence of a national movement towards integration but typically this is occurring within a context of inadequate policy formulation, organizational development and resource provision.     

Examining trace data to explore self-regulated learning

This exploratory case study examined in depth the studying activities of eight students across two studying episodes, and compared traces of actual studying activities to self-reports of self-regulated learning. Students participated in a 2-hour activity using our gStudy software to complete a course assignment. We used log file data to construct profiles of self-regulated learning activity in four ways: (a) frequency of studying events, (b) patterns of studying activity, (c) timing and sequencing of events, and (d) content analyses of students’ notes and summaries. Findings indicate that students’ self-reports may not calibrate to actual studying activity. Analyses of log file traces of studying activities provide important information for defining strategies and sequences of fine-grained studying actions. We contrast these analytic methods and illustrate how trace-based profiles of students’ self-regulated studying inform models of metacognitive monitoring, evaluation, and self-regulated adaptation.     

Is phonology bypassed in normal or dyslexic development?

A pervasive assumption in most accounts of normal reading and spelling development is that phonological coding is important early in development but is subsequently superseded by faster, orthographic coding which bypasses phonology. We call this assumption, which derives from dual process theory, the developmental bypass hypothesis. The present study tests four specific predictions of the developmental bypass hypothesis by comparing dyslexics and nondyslexics from the same families in a cross-sectional design. The four predictions are: 1) That phonological coding skill develops early in normal readers and soon reaches asymptote, whereas orthographic coding skill has a protracted course of development; 2) that the correlation of adult reading or spelling performance with phonological coding skill is considerably less than the correlation with orthographic coding skill; 3) that dyslexics who are mainly deficient in phonological coding skill should be able to bypass this deficit and eventually close the gap in reading and spelling performance; and 4) that the greatest differences between dyslexics and developmental controls on measures of phonological coding skill should be observed early rather than late in development. None of the four predictions of the developmental bypass hypothesis were upheld. Phonological coding skill continued to develop in nondyslexics until adulthood. It accounted for a substantial (32–53 percent) portion of the variance in reading and spelling performance in adult nondyslexics, whereas orthographic coding skill did not account for a statistically reliable portion of this variance. The dyslexics differed little across age in phonological coding skill, but made linear progress in orthographic coding skill, surpassing spelling-age (SA) controls by adulthood. Nonetheless, they didnot close the gap in reading and spelling performance. Finally, dyslexics were significantly worse than SA (and Reading Age [RA]) controls in phonological coding skill only in adulthood. This research was supported by the following grants to the first author: A NIMH RSDA (MH00419-05) and project grants from NIMH (MH38820-04), NICHD (HD19423-02) and the March of Dimes (12-135). Author Smith’s work was supported by a project grant from NICHD (HD 19423-02).