Books and articles of academic interest

Books and articles of academic interest     

Reading prosody development in Spanish children

Reading prosody is considered one of the essential markers of reading fluency, alongside accuracy and speed. The aim of our study was to investigate how development of reading prosody in Spanish children varies with sentence type and length. We compared primary school children from the third and fifth grades with an adult sample. Participants were recorded reading aloud a narrative text including short and long declarative, exclamatory and interrogative sentences. Recordings were analysed using Praat software to measure several prosodic features (i.e., pauses, duration, pitch and intensity). We found that third-grade children had not yet developed an adult-like prosody: they made more pauses, had a flatter melodic contour and had difficulty anticipating sentence structure. Fifth-graders displayed some features of adult prosody. Both length and type of sentence influenced the expressiveness of reading in the three groups. We conclude that reading expressiveness is closely related to reading experience and develops in a similar way to decoding and reading speed.     

Letter name knowledge and the ability to learn to read by processing letter–phoneme relations in words: Evidence from Brazilian Portuguese-speaking children

Previous studies [Scott & Ehri (1990) Journal of Reading Behavior22: 149–166; de Abreu & Cardoso-Martins (1998) Reading and Writing:An Interdisciplinary Journal 10: 85–104] have shown thatprereaders who know the names of the lettersuse a visual–phonological strategy to learn toread words in which the names of one or moreletters can be clearly detected in thepronunciation of the words. The present resultsextend these findings by showing that BrazilianPortuguese-speaking prereaders who know thenames of the letters can process letter–soundrelations to learn to read spellings in whichthe letters correspond to phonemes, not toletter names. Following Ehri & Wilce'sprocedure [(1985) Reading Research Quarterly 20:163–179], Brazilian preschool childrenlearned to read two types of simplifiedspellings: phonetic spellings, that is,spellings in which the letters corresponded tophonemes in the pronunciation of the words(e.g., SPT for sapato), and visualspellings, that is, spellings in which theletters did not correspond to sounds in thepronunciation of the words, but which werevisually more salient (e.g., VST for pijama). The children learned to read thephonetic spellings more easily than the visualspellings, suggesting that they recognized theletter–phoneme relations in learning to readthe phonetic spellings. This interpretation isbolstered by the results of correlationalanalyses between knowledge of letter sounds andperformance on the two word-learning tasks.While knowledge of letter–phonemecorrespondences did not correlate withperformance on the word-learning task with thevisual spellings, it correlated significantlyand positively with the children's ability tolearn to read the phonetic spellings.     

Does entrepreneurship education matter? Business students’ perspectives

The paper presents the findings of a mixed-methods study investigating the perceptions of business students in the Czech Republic towards entrepreneurship education, and examining the factors influencing their level of intention to be entrepreneurs. The results indicate that family background significantly influences the student’s entrepreneurial intention, and that participation in entrepreneurship-oriented courses positively influences the student’s level of self-efficacy. The study revealed further that business education had some effect on the student’s ability to gain the necessary knowledge for entrepreneurship. Another key finding was that entrepreneurship education specifically for business students has to equip students with entrepreneurial skills, attributes and behaviours. The results also suggest that entrepreneurship education is a contextually determined concept which requires modification of content and methods to meet the specific needs of particular target groups. The study has important implications for higher education institutions in terms of designing and managing effective entrepreneurship education.     

The DIYLab project (Do It Yourself in Education: Expanding Digital Competence to Foster Student Agency and Collaborative Learning) / El proyecto DIYLab (Do It Yourself in Education: Expanding Digital Competence to Foster Student Agency and Collaborative Learning)

The DIYLab project aims to promote lifelong learning by expanding students’ digital competences, autonomy and creativity through collaborative and meaningful learning. DIYLab locates students at the centre of the learning experience, turning them into the producer of their own learning material. This three-year-old project has been implemented in primary schools, secondary schools and universities in three European countries, where students create digital products that are subsequently published through a Hub or digital centre.     

Learning from human cadaveric prosections: Examining anxiety in speech therapy students

Human anatomy education often utilizes the essential practices of cadaver dissection and examination of prosected specimens. However, these exposures to human cadavers and confronting death can be stressful and anxiety‐inducing for students. This study aims to understand the attitudes, reactions, fears, and states of anxiety that speech therapy students experience in the dissection room. To that end, a before‐and‐after cross‐sectional analysis was conducted with speech therapy students undertaking a dissection course for the first time. An anonymous questionnaire was administered before and after the exercise to understand students' feelings and emotions. State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory questionnaires (STAI‐S and STAI‐T) were used to evaluate anxiety levels. The results of the study revealed that baseline anxiety levels measured using the STAI‐T remained stable and unchanged during the dissection room experience (P > 0.05). Levels of emotional anxiety measured using the STAI‐S decreased, from 15.3 to 11.1 points (P < 0.05). In the initial phase of the study, before any contact with the dissection room environment, 17% of students experienced anxiety, and this rate remained unchanged by end of the session (P > 0.05). A total of 63.4% of students described having thoughts about life and death. After the session, 100% of students recommended the dissection exercise, giving it a mean score of 9.1/10 points. Anatomy is an important subject for students in the health sciences, and dissection and prosection exercises frequently involve a series of uncomfortable and stressful experiences. Experiences in the dissection room may challenge some students' emotional equilibria. However, students consider the exercise to be very useful in their education and recommend it. Anat Sci Educ 10: 487–494. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.