Students with LD in higher education: use and contribution of assistive technology and website courses and their correlation to students' hope and well-being

This study examined the extent and patterns of usage of web courses, and their contribution to the academic and social perceptions of 964 undergraduate students with and without learning disabilities studying in higher education. Students were asked to complete four questionnaires examining the usage patterns of various adaptive technologies and their contribution to the student. The questionnaires assessed Perceptions of Learning through Online Usage; Accessibility of Campus Computing; Hope Scale and Subjective Well-being Scale. A detailed examination of the usage patterns of online courses revealed that, compared to the comparison group, students with LD log more often into the course sites, going into the forum more frequently and leaving significantly more messages on the forum than students in the comparison group. Findings indicated that students with LD are more familiar with assistive technology and use it more than the comparison group. Students with LD reported higher scores on the Hope scale, they felt an increased drive to find different pathways to attain their goals, as well as being motivated to pursue those goals, and their subjective well-being was higher that of the students in the comparison group.     

Science Engagement and Literacy: A retrospective analysis for students in Canada and Australia

Given international concerns about students' pursuit (or more correctly, non-pursuit) of courses and careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, this study is about achieving a better understanding of factors related to high school students' engagement in science. The study builds on previous secondary analyses of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) datasets for New Zealand and Australia. For the current study, we compared patterns of science engagement and science literacy for male and female students in Canada and Australia. The study's secondary analysis revealed that for all PISA measures included under the conceptual umbrella of engagement in science (i.e. interest, enjoyment, valuing, self-efficacy, self-concept and motivation), 15-year-old students in Australia lagged their Canadian counterparts to varying, albeit modest, degrees. Our retrospective analysis further shows, however, that gender equity in science engagement and science literacy is evident in both Canadian and Australian contexts. Additionally, and consistent with our previous findings for indigenous and non-indigenous students in New Zealand and Australia, we found that for male and female students in both countries, the factor most strongly associated with variations in engagement in science was the extent to which students participate in science activities outside of school. In contrast, and again for both Canadian and Australian students, the factors most strongly associated with science literacy were students' socioeconomic backgrounds, and the amount of formal time spent doing science. The implications of these results for science educators and researchers are discussed.     

Linguistic processing in Hebrew-speaking children from low and high SES backgrounds

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of Socio-Economic Status (SES) on Hebrew-speaking children??s developing ability to pluralize nouns and mark adjectives in agreement with them. Participants were 180 gradeschool children from mid-high SES and 180 peers from low SES, in six consecutive grade levels. The task consisted of 32 singular noun-adjective pairs with nouns classified into four categories by suffix type (Regular and Irregular) and by stem type (Nonchanging and Changing). Results showed a consistent advantage to the high SES children in accuracy of noun and adjective plurals, with gaps widening when the morphological requirements were harder, that is, in the irregular categories. Moreover, the fact that low SES children??s reaction times to producing the full plural phrase hardly decreased indicates that, unlike their high SES peers, they also did not gain more processing efficiency with age and schooling.     

Building literacy in alphabetic, abjad and morphosyllabic systems

Preschoolers?? metalinguistic and visual capabilities may be associated with the writing system of their culture. We examined patterns of performance in phonological awareness, naming of letters, morphological awareness, and visual-spatial relations, in 5-year-old native speakers of Spanish (n?=?43), Hebrew (n?=?40), and Cantonese (n?=?63) and the relations of these literacy related skills to concurrent word writing and word reading. The writing systems in these languages represent three major categories, i.e., alphabetic (Spanish), abjad (Hebrew), and morphosyllabic (Chinese). Phonological awareness, letter naming, and perception of visual-spatial relations differed across groups, whereas morphological awareness showed a similar level of attainment in all three languages. Stepwise regression analyses explaining writing and reading for each language separately revealed both commonalities and differences between languages. Phonological awareness assessed by initial syllable deletion contributed to writing and to reading in Cantonese and in Spanish. Phonological awareness assessed by final phoneme isolation explained reading in Hebrew, whereas final and initial phoneme isolation explained writing in Hebrew. Letter naming predicted both writing and reading in Spanish and in Hebrew, while perception of visual-spatial relations did so in Cantonese. At age 5, children??s metalinguistic knowledge and visual discrimination abilities are already attuned to the particular features of the writing system to which they are exposed.     

Writing with young children: a comparison of paternal and maternal guidance

The increasing involvement of fathers in active parenthood raises questions concerning their parenting style. This study compared mothers and fathers in their writing interactions with their young children, exploring how parents' writing guidance related to children's early literacy. Mothers and fathers of 51 kindergarteners were videotaped separately at home while writing words with their child. Video analysis assessed measures of parental guidance specifically in the writing process and guidance measures that characterised teaching interactions in general. Children's early literacy was assessed. A family style of guidance emerged, where a parent's guidance resembled the spouse's. Moreover, both parents' guidance correlated significantly with children's early literacy. Still, mothers scored higher than fathers on both the writing and the more general guidance measures. The study suggests that encouraging both parents to write with their children, while supplying them with productive methods for guidance, can enhance children's literacy competencies.     

Why social workers do not implement decisions to remove children at risk from home

OBJECTIVES: The study explores why social workers do not always implement their decisions to remove children at risk from their homes. METHOD: Social workers in Israel filled out questionnaires for 96 children at risk at two points of time: when they began to consider whether or not to remove the child, they completed questionnaires tapping their own, the parents', and the children's features. Six months later, they reported their decision, whether or not they had carried it out, and if not, why not. RESULTS: Some 21% of the workers' decisions were not implemented, almost all of them decisions to remove. The main reasons given were the objections of the parents and/or the child. Decisions were implemented for all the children whose mothers were alcohol or drug addicts. Implementation was lower for older children, children who were uncooperative with the social worker, and for children whose parents were uncooperative. It was also lower among experienced workers than novices. CONCLUSIONS: Further study is required to examine the generalizability of these findings to other countries, to understand better the reasons for the non-implementation, and to follow-up on the consequences of the non-implementation.     

Parents’ support during different writing tasks: a comparison between parents of precocious readers,preschoolers, and school-age children

The study aimed to deepen the understanding of parental sensitivity to their children’s abilities and the nature of their scaffolding during writing tasks. We compared the parent–child writing interactions of three groups: precocious readers (PRs), same age preschoolers (SA), and older children with the same reading level (SRL) as the PRs. Each of 60 parent child-dyads was videotaped during three writing activities that varied in their structure level: word writing, writing a birthday invitation, and free writing within a wordless children’s book. Interactions were analyzed for parental literacy-specific, social-emotional, and general cognitive support. Results demonstrated parents’ sensitivity to their children’s developmental level and skills. Parents of PRs showed levels of literacy-specific support similar to parents of older children with the SRL, and higher than parents of SA non-reading children. Parents of PRs resembled parents of SA preschoolers and provided their children with more social-emotional support than parents of the older SRL children. The general cognitive support of parents of PRs was higher than that of the two other groups. Moreover, parents of PRs referred to writing conventions and showed more responsiveness than parents in the other two groups. Parents in all three groups emphasized literacy-specific support during the more structured writing tasks (words and invitation), and placed greater emphasis on the social-emotional and general cognitive support during the least structured task (free writing within the wordless book). Beyond these differences, parents demonstrated a consistent support style. We discuss parent–child writing interactions as a context for early literacy development.     

Representing written vowels in university students with dyslexia compared with normal hebrew readers

The study investigates dyslexic and normal Hebrew readers’ perception of words containing a vowel letter in different orthographic and morphological contexts. In the first experiment, 72 undergraduate education students (half diagnosed with reading disabilities and half normal readers) were asked to judge pointed words with different morphological structures with and without the grapheme W. Half of the words had consistent (obligatory) W and half had inconsistent (optional) W. In the second experiment, the same procedure was repeated using the same words without pointing marks. Response latencies and accuracy were measured. In both experiments, dyslexic readers did less well than normal readers. They had lower scores on accurate lexical decisions and they took more time over these decisions. They also exhibited some deviant patterns, indicating that they cannot make use of orthographic and morphological cues that are available to normal readers, especially in the pointed experiment. Processing pointed words placed a heavier cognitive burden on the dyslexic readers. These findings are in line with other studies of adult dyslexic reader/writers, and support a reading / spelling processing model, which claims that internal orthographic representations of words are increasingly strengthened with each exposure during reading, but not all graphemes are strengthened equally. The general implication is that the ambiguities that exist in the relationships between orthography, phonology, and morphology underlie spelling knowledge, and are particularly difficult for dyslexic readers.     

Measuring Halliwick Foundation course students' perceptions of case-based learning,assessment and transfer of learning

Learning Environments Research - Case-based Learning (CBL) is perceived as an effective pedagogical approach to improving students’ ability to transfer knowledge, concepts and skills learned...