Relations Among Oral Reading Fluency,Silent Reading Fluency,and Reading Comprehension: A Latent Variable Study of First-Grade Readers

In the present study, we examined oral and silent reading fluency and their relations with reading comprehension. In a series of structural equation models with latent variables using data from 316 first-grade students, (a) silent and oral reading fluency were found to be related yet distinct forms of reading fluency, (b) silent reading fluency predicted reading comprehension better for skilled readers than for average readers, (c) list reading fluency predicted reading comprehension better for average readers than for skilled readers, and (d) listening comprehension predicted reading comprehension better for skilled readers than for average readers.     

Context matters: increasing understanding with interactive Clicker Case studies

Although interactive technology is presumed to increase student understanding in large classes, no previous research studies have empirically explored the effects of Clicker Cases on students?? performance. A Clicker Case is a story (e.g., a problem someone is facing) that uses clickers (student response systems) to engage students in understanding the meaning of the science contained within the story. Using an experimental randomized Solomon design across 11 institutions, we found that Clicker Cases increased student understanding more than PowerPoint lectures in large introductory biology classrooms, although there was variation across institutions and topics. By examining student performance in conjunction with faculty experience, we found that strong Clicker Cases created dissonance, captured attention and involved students in interpreting data or making decisions. This study provides a model for collaborative research across multiple institutions and demonstrates the need for using multiple institutions and topics in research on education.     

International trends in health science librarianship Part 9: the UK – Scotland and Wales

This is the 9th in a series of articles exploring international trends in health science librarianship. The previous article in this series looked at Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In this issue the focus is Scotland and Wales. There will be three or four more articles this year tracking trends in the Far East, Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. JM     

Body Composition of Olympic Speed Skating Candidates

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to quantify the body composition of speed skaters who were candidates for the 1980 United States Olympic Team. Subjects were 19 males between 16 and 27 years of age. Most subjects had just completed three months of intensive dry-land training. Seven skinfold fat, 11 circumference, and seven diameter sites were measured. Body density was determined by underwater weighing. Study of the speed skaters (mean ± standard deviation) gave the following results: height, 176 ± 8 cm; body weight, 69.6 ± 7.0 kg; body density, 1.081 ± 0.006 g/ml; and relative fat, 7.6 ± 2.6%. The eight speed skaters who were selected for the Olympic Team were significantly older, taller, and heavier in total body weight and fat free weight (FFW) than the non-Olympians. Thus, years of training and greater FFW may help differentiate international caliber male speed skaters. Data on Olympic speed skating candidates from 1968 showed them to be of similar age (20.1 yr) and height (176 cm), but greater in body weight (73.9 kg). Relative fat was not determined but the body mass index (Wt/ht²) showed that the present speed skaters may be leaner (24.0 vs 22.2). These differences in body composition were thought to be, in part, a result of the more rigorous training program currently used by speed skaters. The body composition of the speed skaters was also compared to that of other athletic groups.     

Editor's Viewpoint

Abstract

From each volume of Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, the Research Consortium selects one or mwe papem that are outstanding contributions to scholarship and are likely to signifcantly aflect theoy and/or practice. The Selection Committee for Volume 65, 1994, was comprised of Daniel Landers, Chaiq Arizona State University; Penny McCukgh, University of Colorado, Boulder; Gil Reme, Auburn University; Christine Wells, Arizona State University; Richard Magill, Louisiana State University; Allen Jackson, University of North Texas; and Thomas Martinek, University of North Carolina at Greensboro. The RQES Editorial Board has asked the author of the selected paper to preparee a brief retrospective of the development of her research.     

The impact of international students on measured learning and standards in Australian higher education

International students, who are also often from non-English language speaking backgrounds (NESB students), are an important source of revenue for Australian universities. Yet little large-scale evidence exists about their performance once they arrive. Do these students perform worse than other students in Australian undergraduate classrooms? What happens to other students’ performance when these students are added to classrooms? I provide new empirical evidence on these questions using recent administrative panel data from the business schools of two Australian Technology Network universities. Results show strong and highly statistically significant main effects and spillover effects, raising concerns about the integration of international NESB students into the Australian tertiary environment.     

The relationship between phonological awareness and the development of orthographic representations

A training study was conducted to investigatethe relationship between phoneme segmentationability and the development of orthographicrepresentations. Five-year-old children withvarying degrees of phoneme segmentationability were taught to read ten new words byrepeated presentation of the words onflashcards. It was found that those childrenwho were most well equipped to perform phonemesegmentation tasks acquired this new readingvocabulary significantly faster than those whowere less phonemically aware. A series ofpost-tests was implemented to discover thenature of the internal orthographicrepresentations which the children had createdfor the words learned. The results of thesepost-tests demonstrated that the children whowere most phonemically aware had alsointernalised the most detailed orthographicrepresentations, despite needing fewerlearning trials. Salient letters fororthographic storage were predictable from thechildren's phoneme segmentation abilities. This paper provides strong support for thethesis that phonemic awareness is related toorthographic storage as well as alphabeticreading techniques.     

Political culture and education in advanced industrial societies: West Germany and the United States

This paper sets out a theoretical framework for the understanding of education and political culture in industrial societies. The framework represents a response to the systems approach to this subject. The framework we propose treats political alienation as a normal outcome of the incompatibility between egalitarian goals and social inequalities in democratic systems. The framework is then applied to the role of education in the United States. We view education as a means by which norms later productive of political alienation are initially distributed throughout democratic systems. Further, we view the school's current predicament in America as a manifestation of its role in the creation of alienation. We then turn to Germany and speculate about the sources of recent democratic support in that political culture, despite the alienating tendencies predicted by our model. We single out factors of tradition, religion, economics, and educational organization as means of understanding changes in the political culture of that society. An absence of relevant data prevents us from applying our model of alienation in a fully comparative way to the German situation. We conclude by considering the effects of short-run political events on our model, and by speculating about the resurgence of alienation in German political culture once German schools, like American schools, more fully play the role of disseminating egalitarian norms in a socially inegalitarian system.

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Zusammenfassung Diese Studie stellt einen Rahmen für das Verständnis des Bildungswesens und der politischen Kultur in Industrieländern auf, der als Antwort auf den Systems-Ansatz zu diesem Thema gedacht ist. Dieser Rahmen behandelt politische Entfremdung als normales Ergebnis der Unvereinbarkeit von egalitären Zielen und sozialen Ungleichheiten in demokratischen Systemen. Zunächst wird er auf die Rolle des Bildungswesens in den USA angewandt. Bildung wird als ein Mittel gesehen, dem gesamten demokratischen System Normen zu eigen zu machen, die später zu politischer Entfremdung führen. Auch die gegenwärtigen Schwierigkeiten im amerikanischen Schulwesen werden auf seine Rolle als Erzeuger von Entfremdung zurückgeführt. Dann geht die Untersuchung auf die Bundesrepublik Deutschland über und stellt Überlegungen an über die Ursachen der deutlichen Zunahme demokratischer Gesinnung, trotz der von dem hier vorgeschlagenen Modell vorausgesetzten Entfremdungstendenzen. Tradition, religiöse und wirtschaftliche Faktoren sowie die Organisation des deutschen Bildungswesens werden zur Erklärung der Veränderungen in der politischen Kultur dieser Gesellschaft herangezogen. Mangels relevanter Daten kann das Entfremdungsmodell nicht in völlig vergleichbarer Weise auf die deutsche Situation angewandt werden. Abschliessend werden die Auswirkungen kurzfristiger politischer Ereignisse auf das Modell in Betracht gezogen sowie die Möglichkeit, dass auch in der deutschen politischen Kultur wieder stärkere Entfremdung eintreten wird, sobald die deutschen Schulen, ähnlich den amerikanischen, in vollerem Umfang die Rolle der Verbreitung egalitärer Normen in einem sozial nicht-egalitären Gesellschaftssystem spielen.

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Résumé Cet article présente und cadre théorique de travail permettant une meilleure compréhension de l'éducation et de la culture politique dans les sociétés industrielles. Ce cadre est une réponse à l'approche systématique de ce sujet. Le cadre que nous proposons envisage l'aliénation politique comme un aboutissement normal de l'incompatibilité entre buts égalitaires et inégalités sociales dans des systèmes démocratiques. Le cadre est ensuite appliqué au rôle de l'éducation aux Etats Unis. Nous regardons l'éducation comme un moyen par lequel les normes qui, ultérieurement vont produire l'aliénation politique, sont distribuées initialement, dans les systèmes démocratiques. Nous examinons ensuite l'école: nous voyons sa situation critique actuelle en Amérique comme une manifestation de son rôle dans la création de l'aliénation. Nous nous tournons ensuite vers l'Allemagne et nous formons des conjectures sur les sources du récent soutien démocratique à cette culture politique, en dépit des tendances à l'aliénation prédites par notre modèle. Nous choisissons des facteurs de tradition, de religion, d'économie et d'organisation éducative comme étant des moyens permettant de comprendre les changements dans la culture politique de cette société. Une absence de données pertinentes relatives à ce sujet nous empêche d'appliquer notre modèle d'aliénation d'une façon parfaitement comparative à la situation en Allemagne. Nous concluons en examinant les effets des évènements politiques pendant une brève période sur notre modèle et en faisant quelques réflexions sur la résurgence de l'aliénation dans la culture politique allemande, lorsque les écoles allemandes, comme les écoles américaines, jouent plus complètement le rôle de disséminatrices de normes égalitaires dans un système socialement inégalitaire.