Education,Economy and Social Change

ABSTRACT

In advanced industrial societies the educational system has been identified as making a major contribution to national economic prosperity. In this paper we examine how the educational system should be organised to meet the social and economic challenge of the late twentieth century. In asking this question the intention is to redirect current debates towards a more thorough going discussion about the interrelationship between education, economy and society. It will be argued that this broader perspective is essential if we are to fully grasp and understand the implications of the changing social and economic conditions of the late twentieth century, as well as the likely consequences of recent policy reforms.     

A longitudinal investigation of direct and indirect links between reading skills in kindergarten and reading comprehension in tenth grade

In this study, researchers examined the extent to which several fundamental measures of reading proficiency from kindergarten students (N = 3180) were linked to reading comprehension in tenth grade while controlling for third grade vocabulary and oral reading fluency. Analyses tested the direct and indirect relations between and among kindergarten, third grade, and tenth grade measures. Results showed significant direct effects from kindergarten nonsense word fluency and letter naming fluency to tenth grade reading comprehension, along with significant indirect effects of kindergarten nonsense word fluency and vocabulary to tenth grade reading comprehension. Findings suggest that fundamental precursors maintain strong impact upon reading comprehension into the secondary school years. These findings are discussed along with implications for interventions and ideas for future research.     

Phonological recoding as a universal process?

A phonological confusion task was employed to explore whether or not beginning readers of Chinese activate phonological codes while reading Chinese characters. Twenty first graders and twenty third graders read phonologically similar and dissimilar character strings. Following the presentation of each string, they were required to identify the characters from among a set of recognition items. Three major findings indicated that subjects used phonological codes while reading Chinese characters: (1) Subjects recognized fewer phonologically similar characters than phonologically dissimilar ones; (2) The phonological confusion effect varied with degree of phonological similarity among the characters read. Characters having the same rhyme and same tone (SRST) were recognized less accurately than characters of the same rhyme but different tones (SRDT), which in turn were recognized less accurately than characters of different rhymes and different tones (DRDT); (3) Silent reading and oral reading resulted in similar patterns of phonological confusion, indicating that similar codes were activated during the two reading conditions.