Researching and promoting phonological awareness in the nursery class

The paper summarises the pilot study and the first two phases of a longitudinal study which set out to prevent the emergence of written language difficulties, by addressing the ability of pre-schoolers to make phonological judgements. It describes the assessment procedure which was used with 240 nursery-class children, aged 4 years 5 months, and the activities which were designed to give these children experience in attending to the sound structure of language before the assessment was carried out. Following assessment 41 children were identified as having poor rhyme awareness and were targeted for one-to-one training. In the second phase of the study, also discussed here, 21 were given training in the skills supporting phonological awareness and the remainder were assigned to a control group for equivalent training in categorisation skills. It is intended that the literacy skills of both groups will be assessed when the children are 7 years old.     

The Black Arts Movement and African American Young Adult Literature: An Evaluation of Narrative Style

In this article I question whether or not African American young adult literature serves as a primer for, and a version of, African American adult literature. Using the Black Aesthetic as my literary theory and the Coretta Scott King Award as the young adult canon, I note that while the content of adolescent literature is consistent with the tenets of the Black Aesthetic and African American adult literature, the literary elements and style are not. As such, young readers of African American young adult literature are not necessarily prepared for the literary elements and style of canonical African American adult literature. Further, I note that editors, publishers, and literary critics may contribute to the construction of young adult literature, in that editors may discourage authors from experimenting with form and style. Finally, I call for reorienting Black children’s and adolescent literature away from White literary elements and style and toward Black literary elements and style.     

‘Supportive’, ‘real’, and ‘low-cost’: implicit comparisons and universal assumptions in the construction of the prospective college-based HE student

This paper first argues for the importance of continued analysis of marketising discourses in Higher Education (HE), both despite and because of their ubiquity. Secondly, the paper looks specifically at college-based HE provision in English Further Education (FE). Using the ‘possible selves’ concept alongside critical discourse analysis, the paper analyses the representations of prospective students on marketing web pages for HE provision in FE colleges. Arguing that the web pages reveal more than just the limited language of HE marketing strategy, the paper highlights common representations of the college-based HE student across policy, research and marketing sources. By exploring both the celebratory and the limiting nature of these representations, the paper therefore asks what the pages’ projections of future or prospective students can tell us about current understandings of English college-based HE.     

Interpersonal behaviour in senior high school biology classes

This article describes the first use of the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction in senior biology classes and describes students' perceptions of their interpersonal relationships with their teachers in the classroom environment. The article also describes associations between students' perceptions of interpersonal relationships with their teachers and student outcomes. The study confirmed the reliability and validity of the QTI when used in senior secondary biology classes. Generally, the dimensions of the QTI were found to be significantly associated with student attitude scores. In particular, students' attitude scores were higher in classrooms in which students perceived greater leadership, helpful/friendly, and understanding behaviours in their teachers.     

Negotiating Methodological Dilemmas in a Range of Chilly Climates: A story of pressures,principles and problems

This article discusses methodological, ethical and material issues related to the author's work on a qualitative, longitudinal research project, the 12 to 18 Project. It discusses the difficulty of balancing concerns about reactivity with concerns about obligations to the research subjects; the effects of the current Australian university funding regime on the shaping and conduct of research; and the difficulty of taking up particular research questions in certain political climates.     

A comparative judgement approach to the large-scale assessment of primary writing in England

ABSTRACT

Writing assessment is a key feature of most education systems, yet there are limitations with traditional methods of assessing writing involving rubrics. In contrast, comparative judgement appears to overcome the reliability issues that beset the assessment of performance assessment tasks. The approach presented here extends previous work on comparative judgement by directly involving teachers in a large number of schools in the judging of young pupils’ writing. To ensure quality control the process incorporated a process of ‘anchoring’ that ensured that teachers could not artificially inflate their own pupils’ scores. The approach was used to assess the writing of 55,599 primary pupils in England in 2017–2018. Overall, the results showed that a comparative judgement approach to writing incorporating anchoring shows promise in providing a fair and robust large-scale method to assess writing.     

Marriage, adult adjustment, and early parenting

The impact of parents' marriages, measured prenatally, on their parenting of firstborn, 3-month-old infants was assessed. Though the association between marriage and parenting was the focus, adult psychological adjustment was measured also to rule out the alternative hypothesis that psychological adjustment relates to both marital quality and parenting quality and accounts for any association between them. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses in which parental adjustment was entered first as a covariate were used to test the relation between close/confiding marriages and parenting of 3-month-old infants. From the findings, it was concluded that even when differences in individual psychological adjustment are taken into account, mothers are warmer and more sensitive with their infants and fathers hold more positive attitudes toward their infants and their roles as parents when they are in close/confiding marriages. It is asserted that qualities of marriage play an important part in the development of parent-child relationships.     

The impact of teachers' beliefs on the literacy experiences of young children: a New Zealand perspective

There has been a growing focus in New Zealand on the early literacy learning of young children. This emphasis has challenged early childhood teachers to ensure there are appropriate literacy events within their programme. The aim of this study was to identify early childhood teachers' knowledge and beliefs about literacy learning and examine how these translated into literacy practices. Four early childhood settings were chosen—two sessional kindergartens and two full‐day early learning centres. Eight early childhood teachers from four different centres were interviewed. All teachers held a recognized early childhood qualification and were working within the framework of Te Whaariki, the New Zealand early childhood curriculum. Five children in each setting were observed using narrative observations. All teachers were committed to providing meaningful and purposeful literacy experiences within a play‐based programme. However, although teachers had created rich early literacy environments, there was some tendency toward formal skills‐based interactions. The children themselves created many opportunities for authentic and rich literacy events.