Developing a comprehensive model of risk and protective factors that can predict spelling at age seven: findings from a community sample of Victorian children

The paper reports on a study designed to develop a risk model that can best predict single-word spelling in seven-year-old children when they were aged 4 and 5. Test measures, personal characteristics and environmental influences were all considered as variables from a community sample of 971 children. Strong concurrent correlations were found between single-word spelling and single-word reading while expressive language and, to a lesser extent, receptive language were less strongly correlated. Predictors of single-word spelling at ages 4 and 5 were dominated by child-related factors such as letter knowledge, a history of speech impairment and expressive language along with maternal word reading ability. Based on the strength of the predictive factors identified at both age 4 and 5, our results provide initial support for using a targeted model for screening pre-schoolers at risk of not mastering spelling in a timely manner.     

Television—the Housewife's Choice? The 1949 Mass Observation Television Directive,Reluctance and Revision

This article considers the responses of women, many of whom describe themselves as housewives, in the 1949 Mass Observation Television Directive, in order to interrogate some of the broader assumptions around television's relationship with ‘the housewife’ as key to its success. Against the backcloth of social histories revising ideas about gender, modernity and suburbia in the post-war period, this article considers some of the ways in which initial reluctance towards television was recorded and negotiated. It presents three themes around tensions between home and leisure, the domestication of entertainment and ‘going out’, and the appreciation of particular genre, which suggest that the adoption of television as mass entertainment by women might not have been as smooth a process as we have come to understand.     

Examining the Influence of Multiple-Choice Test Formats on Student Performance

Innovative Higher Education - Learning gains associated with multiple-choice testing formats that provide immediate feedback (e.g., IFAT®) are often greater than those for typical...     

Getting in,getting on,going further: Exploring the role of employers in the degree apprentice to graduate transition

Transitions from education into work, or as part of career change and development, are increasingly central to policy debate and academic inquiry. However, the role that employers play in shaping transition is often overlooked. In this paper, we examine this issue through the experiences of a graduating cohort of ‘degree apprentices’. We present original analysis of new empirical data from what we believe to be the first substantive qualitative longitudinal research conducted with those experiencing this new vocational pathway in the English Apprenticeships system. Through analysis of repeat semi-structured interviews with 22 degree apprenticeship graduates (44 interviews in total), we provide early empirical insights into experiences of this new pathway and add to existing theoretical conceptualisations of transition within the educational literature and the employer's role within it. We show that the degree apprentice to graduate transition can be broken down into three key stages: ‘getting in’, ‘getting on’ and ‘going further’, and that employers—at both strategic and relational levels—shape experiences at each stage.     

Toward a more critical examination of structural models

TETRAD II: Tools for Causal Modeling. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 365 Broadway, Hillsdale, NJ 07642, (201) 666–4110. $150. Requirements: 386 or higher IBM computer and DOS 3.0 or higher.     

‘Personal’and‘critical’? Exam criteria,engagement with texts,and real readers’ responses

This article explores how exam criteria require pupils to engage with texts at once 'personally' and 'critically'. It theorises this dichotomy, suggesting problems it presents in a classroom. Observing that dwindling opportunities for creative writing impede personal engagement, it considers the possibilities suggested by the imaginative writings of two pupils for resolving the dichotomy.