What lexical decision and naming tell us about reading

The lexical decision (LD) and naming (NAM) tasks are ubiquitous paradigms that employ printed word identification. They are major tools for investigating how factors like morphology, semantic information, lexical neighborhood and others affect identification. Although use of the tasks is widespread, there has been little research into how performance in LD or NAM relates to reading ability, a deficiency that limits the translation of research with these tasks to the understanding of individual differences in reading. The present research was designed to provide a link from LD and NAM to the specific variables that characterize reading ability (e.g., decoding, sight word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) as well as to important reading-related abilities (phonological awareness and rapid naming). We studied 99 adults with a wide range of reading abilities. LD and NAM strongly predicted individual differences in word identification, less strongly predicted vocabulary size and did not predict comprehension. Fluency was predicted but with differences that depended on the way fluency was defined. Finally, although the tasks did not predict individual differences in rapid naming or phonological awareness, the failures nevertheless assisted in understanding the cognitive mechanisms behind these reading-related abilities. The results demonstrate that LD and NAM are important tools for the study of individual differences in reading.     

DEWEY'S THEORY OF THE DEMOCRATIC PUBLIC AND THE PUBLIC CHARACTER OF CHARTER SCHOOLS

In this essay, Leonard Waks reconsiders the issue of the public character of charter schools, that is, schools funded through public taxation but operated by non‐state organizations such as nonprofit and for‐profit educational corporations and nongovernmental public interest organizations. Using John Dewey's conception of a democratic public as a framework, Waks examines the following questions: (1) Are schools chartered and funded by government, but operated by nonprofit nongovernmental organizations, ever appropriate instruments of a democratic public? (2) If so, what criteria might distinguish those that are appropriate from those that are not? (3) How might public education be re‐institutionalized so as to include the charter schools that are appropriate? Waks concludes that Dewey's theory of democratic publics can play a useful role in thinking about how to balance the democratic benefits of charter schools for the various subcommunities of our society with the democratic requirement of broad public discourse and intergroup education.     

A shared vision of human excellence: Confucian spirituality and arts education

Abstract

Spirituality encourages the individual to make sense of oneself within a wider framework of meaning and see oneself as part of some larger whole. This article discusses Confucian spirituality by focusing on the spiritual ideals of dao (Way) and he (harmony). It is explained that the Way represents a shared vision of human excellence that is embodied in the guiding discourse inherited from one’s cultural predecessors. The Confucian Way covers all the manifestations of Zhou culture, including its knowledge base, values, beliefs and practices that have been passed down through the generations. The Way is achieved through harmony where human beings find inner peace as well as co-exist with one another and their surroundings. Harmony encompasses an appreciation of beauty, joy and ethical values that may be obtained from arts education. The essay further illustrates an application of Confucian spiritual ideals through music education in a school. A Confucian aim of learning, the article concludes, is one that fosters spiritual development and contests the performativity agenda and school culture.     

Gender differences in academic and social behavior of elementary school transfer students

This study describes a tutoring program designed to help children in grades 3 through 5 who underwent an unscheduled school transfer. We examined gender differences in self-concepts, academic performance, teacher evaluations, and peer ratings. Gender differences were found in several measures, although gender did not substantially interact with the intervention. As expected, female transfer students reported lower self-concepts than males; teachers reported that boys were more popular; peers also rated boys as more aggressive and girls as more likable. Findings suggest that preventive interventions for transfer students need to account for effects of gender.     

The role of speed of processing, rapid naming, and phonological awareness in reading achievement

This study investigated the role of speed of processing, rapid naming, and phonological awareness in reading achievement. Measures of response time in motor, visual, lexical, grammatical, and phonological tasks were administered to 279 children in third grade. Measures of rapid object naming, phonological awareness, and reading achievement were given in second and fourth grades. Reading group comparisons indicated that poor readers were proportionally slower than good readers across response time measures and on the rapid object naming task. These results suggest that some poor readers have a general deficit in speed of processing and that their problems in rapid object naming are in part a reflection of this deficit. Hierarchical regression analyses further showed that when considered along with IQ and phonological awareness, speed of processing explained unique variance in reading achievement. This finding suggests that a speed of processing deficit may be an "extraphonological" factor in some reading disabilities.     

School violence,school differences and school discourses

This article highlights one strand of a study which investigated the concept of the violence‐resilient school. In six inner‐city secondary schools, data on violent incidents in school and violent crime in the neighbourhood were gathered, and compared with school practices to minimise violence, accessed through interviews. Some degree of association between the patterns of behaviour and school practices was found: schools with a wider range of well‐connected practices seemed to have less difficult behaviour. Interviews also showed that the different schools had different organisational discourses for construing school violence, its possible causes and the possible solutions. Differences in practices are best understood in connection with differences in these discourses. Some of the features of school discourses are outlined, including their range, their core metaphor and their silences. The authors suggest that organisational discourse is an important concept in explaining school effects and school differences, and that improvement attempts could have clearer regard to this concept.     

Frequency,duration, and speed of wheel running of rats as a function of age and starvation

The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether age differences in amounts of wheel running of starved rats were due to the frequency of bursts of running, to the average duration of bursts, to speed, or to any combination of these parameters. The experiment was carried out according to a 3 by 2 by 2 mixed model design. The independent variables were age (67, 293, and 746 days old at the start of starvation), food deprivation (total starvation vs ad lib), and occasion of measurement (initial vs maximum activity). The dependent variables were number of wheel revolutions, number of bursts of activity, number of seconds of running per burst, and revolutions per second. The results indicated that acutely starved rats run more often, for longer periods, and at higher speeds than do sated rats, and that with increased age rats run less often, for a shorter time, and at slower speeds.     

Behavioral control by stimulus components of an imprinting object

In the first of three experiments, ducklings that had received prolonged exposure to the visibly moving imprinting object subsequently suppressed ongoing distress vocalization both during brief presentations of the moving object and during brief presentations of its initially neutral stimulus components (i.e., its auditory and static visual features). Only presentations of the moving object were followed by priming aftereffects (namely, enhancement of distress vocalization over a baseline rate). In Experiment 2, weak, but reliable, priming effects were detected after very long presentations of the auditory and static visual features. Experiment 3 found that these features strongly suppressed low, but not high, rates of distress vocalization, while the visibly moving object strongly suppressed both high and low rates. These studies suggest that initially neutral features of an imprinting object acquire the same sort of behavioral control as is exerted by the object when it is in motion, but that this control is somewhat weaker.