Early literacy and comprehension skills in children learning English as an additional language and monolingual children with language weaknesses

Many children learning English as an additional language (EAL) show reading comprehension difficulties despite adequate decoding. However, the relationship between early language and reading comprehension in this group is not fully understood. The language and literacy skills of 80 children learning English from diverse language backgrounds and 80 monolingual English-speaking peers with language weaknesses were assessed at school entry (mean age = 4 years, 7 months) and after 2 years of schooling in the UK (mean age = 6 years, 3 months). The EAL group showed weaker language skills and stronger word reading than the monolingual group but no difference in reading comprehension. Individual differences in reading comprehension were predicted by variations in decoding and language comprehension in both groups to a similar degree.     

Sourcing in Text Comprehension: a Review of Interventions Targeting Sourcing Skills

The process of using information about documents such as the author, genre, and date of publication while evaluating and interpreting those documents’ content was labeled “sourcing” in a seminal paper by Wineburg (Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 73, 1991). Studies in various domains have adapted the term sourcing while referring to central reading skills in modern information societies. In this review, we discuss the concept of sourcing grounded in research from social psychology, information sciences, and text comprehension. Based on that, we reviewed 18 intervention studies in educational settings, in order to identify how sourcing was operationalized in the studies, the nature of the interventions, and how successful they were. The review shows that interventions for younger students emphasized source credibility, whereas interventions among older students also emphasized the role of sourcing in interpretation. None of the studies measured how students search for source features or specifically which features they attend to. Regarding the nature of the studies, the use of multiple partly conflicting documents was common, with that condition positively related to outcome measures. Another characteristic was the use of inquiry tasks. A majority of the studies do not apply findings from persuasion theory and information science indicating that credibility assessment requires effort and motivation. Future interventions should more strongly emphasize the relationship between sourcing and motivation.     

School-Contextual Paths to Student Bullying Behaviour: Teachers Under Time Pressure are Less Likely to Intervene and the Students Know It!

ABSTRACT

We assessed whether the level of time-pressure reported by a school’s teachers is predictive of student bullying perpetration. We combined data from two surveys conducted in 129 schools in 2016: the Stockholm School Survey performed among students in grades 9 and 11 (n?=?10,668), and the Stockholm Teacher Survey carried out among senior level (grades 7–9) and upper secondary school (grades 10–12) teachers (n?=?2259). Multilevel path analyses showed that teachers’ stress and time-pressure increased with declining school leadership functioning. Teachers’ level of time-pressure was, in turn, positively associated with student traditional and cyberbullying behaviour, through its effect on the school staff’s tendency (not) to intervene against bullying, but not through the teachers’ stress level. We conclude that schools with leadership that provides opportunities for the teachers to focus on their main mission can counteract bullying among the students and therefore indirectly also to promote student health.     

Effective schools,school segregation,and the link with school achievement

This study examines whether 3 teacher-rated aspects of school effectiveness differ across school segregation profiles in Stockholm, and to what extent these indicators are associated with the academic achievement of 9th-grade students. Analyses were based on 2 cross-sectional data collections performed in 2014 and 2016, respectively (147 school units), one among teachers (n = 2,024) and the other among 9th-grade students (n = 9,151). Multilevel analysis was applied, estimating 2-level random intercept linear regression models. Results show that teachers’ ratings of school leadership, teacher cooperation, and school ethos, as well as student-reported marks differ across school segregation profiles. Findings further reveal significant associations between these school effectiveness indicators and student performance, even when taking student family background and the school’s student body composition into consideration. In part, these associations are also identified within segregation profiles. Moreover, results show that school ethos acts as a mediator between school segregation profile and student achievement.     

The Elusive Slope

In understanding upper secondary school students’ interpretations of information in graphical representations of a distance–time graph and an ECG graph, little attention has been paid to the analysis of the condition of the conceptual development related to their utterances. Understanding this better can help improve the teaching of interpretations of information in graphical representations of different situations. This paper integrates results from 2 studies and 3 theoretical perspectives: Tall and Vinner’s theoretical perspectives on learning, Chi’s ontological perspectives on conceptual development and Friel’s theoretical perspectives on interpretation of graphical information. The findings provide evidence to support the conjecture that iconic interpretations could be stimulated and generated as a result of student categorisation of a distance–time graph as an event, when in fact the graph is being used to describe and communicate a process. The outcome further indicates that students found a resemblance between the ECG diagram and the periodic function of f(x) = sin(x).     

Conflicts of interest: an indispensable element of education for sustainable development

A central concept introduced in the Nordic debate on sustainable development is ‘action competence’. The concept has been defined as a competence of learners, i.e. the ability to take into consideration the social factors and human conflicts of interest that lies behind environmental questions and sustainable development. The concern of this article is the role of such conflicts for making meaning in relation to sustainable development. With this aim, we analyze a series of interviews with seven high school students. Our analysis takes its point of departure in the works of Dewey and Wittgenstein. It shows that the dialogue partners in this study continuously put one another in the position of having to make communicative choices in the dialogue. Moreover, the choices facing these dialogue partners can be translated into human conflicts of interest of a broader kind. A conclusion we draw from our work is that value judgments dealing with human conflicts of interest are a foundation upon which the dialogue on sustainable development is constructed, and that they seem to be a prerequisite if the dialogue is not to come to a standstill. We discuss the consequences of this finding for education for sustainable development.     

Assessing Children’s Social Functioning and Reading Proficiency: A Systematic Review of the Quality of Educational Assessment Instruments Used in Norwegian Elementary Schools

Social functioning and reading proficiency are critical for success in school and society. Therefore, identifying children with such problems is important. This study had 2 parts: first, a random sample of 234 elementary schools was surveyed about which instruments they use to assess reading proficiency and social functioning. Second, a systematic review of the quality of these instruments was conducted using international standards for examining the quality of assessment instruments. The survey showed that schools more often assessed and had more instruments available for reading than for social functioning. The systematic review of the assessment instruments used revealed that the psychometric qualities of many was weak or undocumented, while the dimensions of test material quality were generally good. The findings demonstrate a need for a more thorough examination of the psychometric properties of assessment instruments to be used in school.     

Prevention and Reduction of Behavioural Problems in School: An evaluation of the Respect program

Disobedient pupils, off‐task behaviour, and bullying are common problems in schools in many countries; they interfere with teaching, create an unsafe learning environment, and challenge the staff. Effective programs involving entire schools to prevent and reduce such problems have already been designed and implemented. However, most interventions target one type of problem behaviour, and their effects have only been evaluated in the short term. The Respect program ¹ 1. The program was run under the name “Connect” in the ConnectOSLO project. View all notes is broad in the sense that it targets not just one but several types of behaviour in order to prevent and reduce problem behaviour. The program was implemented among all the staff and pupils at three primary schools and one secondary school in Norway. A cohort longitudinal design was used in evaluating the program. Pupils in the four schools reported a decrease in the four areas of problem behaviour. This decrease was sustained or continued after the intervention period for some types of behaviour, even though the results differed between grade levels. In terms of effect size, the results were small to moderate for most grade levels. Although this analysis was non‐experimental in nature, it does document sustainable change resulting from intervention in an entire school and suggests that this could be maintained in the long term.